


Miss Otis Regrets

by Nightvision



Category: Queer as Folk (US)
Genre: M/M, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-31
Updated: 2012-10-31
Packaged: 2017-11-17 11:13:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 23,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/550938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nightvision/pseuds/Nightvision
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Justin comes back from New York his first thought is to find a new studio.  It seems perfect for him, so why do all his friends feel so uncomfortable there?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Miss Otis Regrets

MISS OTIS REGRETS

 

Miss Otis regrets she's unable to lunch today, Madam.  
Miss Otis regrets she's unable to lunch today.  
She is sorry to be delayed,  
But last evening down in Lover's Lane she strayed.  
Madam,  
Miss Otis regrets she's unable to lunch today. 

When she woke up and found that her dream of love was gone, Madam,  
She ran to the man who had led her so far astray,  
And from under a velvet gown,  
She drew a gun and shot her lover down.  
Madam,  
Miss Otis regrets she's unable to lunch today.

When the mob came and got her and dragged her from the jail, Madam,  
They strung her from the old willow cross the way.  
And the moment before she died,  
She lifted up her lovely head and cried.  
Madam,  
Miss Otis regrets she's unable to lunch today.

Cole Porter

 

 

 

CHAPTER ONE

 

“Sweetheart, this is no better than your last studio!” Jennifer protested as soon as she stepped through the door. “Surely you can afford something a little more upmarket this time!” 

Justin sighed. “Mom, I’m not living here. This is only a place for me to work.” He indicated the huge trestle table; the battered chest of drawers containing his brushes, paints and varnishes; the easels standing in front of the windows; the racks of canvasses against the far wall. “I don’t just use a sketchbook and a computer anymore. I couldn’t set all this up at the Loft, even if Brian was prepared to let me drip paint everywhere.”

“Well, I realise that, Justin,” Jennifer replied testily. “But why on earth didn’t you come to me? I’m sure I could have found you somewhere a little more salubrious!”

“It’s cheap, quiet, and the light is wonderful,” Justin explained patiently. “Plus it’s within walking distance of the Loft. It’s everything I need.” 

Jennifer looked sceptical. “And does Brian approve?”

“Mom, this is nothing to do with Brian! I chose the place, and I’m paying for it. I wouldn’t dare try to tell Brian how to run Kinnetik and I don’t expect him to interfere with my art.”

Jennifer raised her elegant eyebrows. “So he doesn’t mind you being here alone until God knows what hour and then walking back to the Loft?”

Justin mentally counted to ten. “Mom, I’m an adult, not a child. And in case you’ve forgotten, I lived in New York for nearly two years! I think I can handle the Pitts. Anyway, if it does get too late then I can just stay over here … that’s why I got the futon.”

“From some Thrift Store, by the look of it,” Jennifer sniffed. “I could have given you the one from the spare room.”

“And then have you on my case for getting paint all over it? Mom, you’ve never seen me work. It can get pretty messy.”

“And what about eating?” Jennifer asked, adroitly changing her angle of attack. “I can’t see any cooking facilities.”

“I have an icebox and a microwave. Don’t worry; I’m not going to starve.” 

“But you might get pneumonia!” Jennifer shivered and rubbed her arms with her hands. “Goodness, Justin, it’s cold in here!”

Well, she had a point. Justin didn’t tend to really notice the cold: he’d spent so many winters at the Loft, and then in New York, that he’d become acclimatised to it. His only source of warmth in the studio was an antiquated fan heater, which he rarely bothered turning on unless his fingers became too numb to paint. 

He tried to distract her by taking her shoulders and steering her over to the windows so that she could look down on the tree-lined street and the little park opposite. “See, Mom? It’s a really pretty view. This must have been a classy area once.”

“Then it must have been a very long time ago!” his mother snorted. Her attention was caught by the canvas standing on the easel nearest the window and she walked over to it. “Justin? Who’s this?”

Justin frowned as he looked at the half-finished portrait. “Honestly? I have no idea.”

 

*****************************************************************************************************************************

 

Justin had begun searching for a suitable studio before he moved back from New York: he was a ‘serious’ artist now, and even more than space he needed the privacy to work without distraction. He’d viewed several places but hadn’t been satisfied with any of them: either they were too small, too dingy, too noisy, too far from Liberty Avenue, or way too expensive. But the moment he’d walked down the quiet, tree-lined square and looked up at the building standing on the south-east corner, its lower windows peeping through a curtain of scarlet Virginia Creeper, he’d felt an instant attraction.

The house, like its neighbours, was built of warm yellow brick, tall and narrow, with a broad flight of steps leading from the sidewalk up to the gracefully proportioned front door. When Dial Square had been laid out in the early 1900’s it had obviously been an affluent area: its fortunes had sadly declined since then, and the surrounding houses had all fallen into various states of shabby disrepair. They might have been saved from commercial redevelopment because the square was located too far from the business district, but they were too large and uneconomical for modern families and had gradually been converted into cheap apartments and rooms, mostly rented out to the poorer college kids from nearby Carnegie Mellon. 

Justin was met by a short, cheerful, balding guy – ‘you can call me Denny’ – who seemed to be a sort of caretaker cum agent for the owner. He led Justin up three flights of creaking balustraded stairs and down a long, narrow hallway to a door at the far end, which he unlocked. Justin found himself being ushered into a large uncarpeted space, smelling of old paper and stale air and empty except for a huge, stained porcelain sink in one corner,. The naked wooden floorboards were thick with dust and the plaster on the walls was cracked and yellow. Denny explained that the present owner had bought the property to convert it into rented accommodation but for some reason had never got around to redeveloping the top floor (for which, read: ran out of cash, Justin thought with a smirk) so it had mostly been used for storing junk. “I cleared it out so you could see it,” Denny told him. “It’s got water and it’s got electricity. I guess it’s big enough for what you want, as long as you don’t expect more than the basics. The rest of the tenants are nearly all students, so it’s pretty quiet during the day. Gets a little rowdy at weekends, though.” 

Justin stood looking around. There were four tall, wide sash windows set in the northern wall overlooking the park in the centre of the square and two smaller windows along the eastern side of the room: and although right now the sunlight was having to battle its way through the grime and cobwebs clouding the glass, Justin knew that once they were cleaned he’d have the maximum light exposure for most of the day. He glanced up at the high ceiling and smiled.

“Would the owner object if I whitewashed the walls?”

Denny chuckled. “I very much doubt it.”

“Then let’s talk business.”

Half an hour later Justin was on his way back to Loft: subject to the usual security checks, he had just taken up the tenancy for his new studio, at half the rent he’d expected to pay for it.

 

*****************************************************************************************************************************

 

“So what do you think?” Justin asked.

Brian looked round with lazily sardonic eyes before pointedly wiping a dust bunny from the sole of his loafer. “Needs a lot of work.”

“Not so much,” Justin disagreed. “Just a good cleaning. Denny said I could whitewash the walls too …”

“The owner should do that for you, or at least pay you for the work,” Brian observed.

“I’d rather fix it up myself. And I’m getting it dirt cheap as it is, Brian.”

He was half expecting an argument, but Brian only nodded. “Okay,” he said blandly.

Justin cocked an eye at him suspiciously. “Just like that?”

Brian shrugged casually. “You know what you want. If this is it, and it comes at a good price, fine. It’s in no worse shape then the bath house was when I bought it.”

Justin turned to grip the sleeves of Brian’s overcoat, peering up into his face. “What, no lectures about vermin? No concerns about the safety of the neighbourhood?”

Brian shook his head. “I’m sure you’ve considered them all. But there are a couple of things I’d like you to do, for my own peace of mind at least. Get a decent lock on that door, and have a land line installed.”

“Why do I want a landline? I’ve got my cell.”

Brian let out a long breath that was almost a sigh. “Justin, there has never been a crisis in either of our lives when you have actually been available on your cell phone. Either you’d forgotten to charge it, or you’d switched it off because you were working, or you’d left the fucking thing at home.”

Justin had to acknowledge the truth of that statement. “Okay. I’ll call the cable company, I promise. And I’ll get a new lock.”

“Then I’m happy.”

They locked eyes for a moment. “Are you?” Justin asked eventually.

Brian pressed his lips together in a half-smile and raised his eyebrows as he nodded, and Justin believed he was telling the truth. New York had made him believe.

He hadn’t, quite, when he left. After the fiasco of their almost-wedding, after he’d left his ring still lying with its mate in the box on Brian’s desk, after Brian’s comment about ‘Never again,’ Justin hadn’t known for sure that they would make it. He knew that Brian loved him enough to throw over every rule he’d ever made for his sake: but was that what either of them really wanted? The only way to be certain was to leave, with no promises, commitments or ties on either side. If they stuck it out, and still wanted to be together … then that was the way it was meant to be.

Contrary to most expectations they had stuck it out. Sure, there’d been the occasional misunderstanding and subsequent queen-out from one or the other, after which would follow days - once, after a particularly vitriolic exchange, weeks – of silence; but eventually one of them would crack and call, and everything would be back to normal. And the moment that Justin truly believed in his very soul that this was the way it was always going to be between them was the moment he allowed himself to finally go home.

That wasn’t to say that nothing had changed, because it had. He and Brian had been living apart for two years and the dynamics between them had shifted a little, because Justin had grown up a lot in New York. Hollywood had been different: he’d only been there for six months and he’d walked straight into a highly-paid, challenging job that never allowed him enough time to feel home-sick. New York had been hard, lonely, and had proved ultimately hollow: but it had taught him valuable lessons. He’d learned how to deal with disappointment and frustration, how to stand on his own feet without the financial and emotional support of his friends and family, and he’d learned to come to terms with his own limitations and inadequacies. His most valuable lesson, however, was to realise that, although he would never stop wanting to be with Brian, he was capable of surviving without him. 

Justin might not have conquered the art world, but he was coming back to Pittsburgh a little richer, a little harder, and a lot wiser, with a new sense of self-sufficiency and confidence. He was discovering a Brian who had also changed somewhat: who was more patient, more relaxed, less likely to push the self-destruct button as soon as he felt threatened; a Brian who actually seemed ready to confide in him a little. For the first time Justin felt that they were meeting as equals.

He reached up on tip-toes and pressed a kiss to Brian’s chin. “And so am I,” he whispered.

Brian’s arms went round him, crushing him against the expensive wool of his coat and Justin found his lips being captured in a long, hungry embrace, hard and hot and altogether wonderful. When Brian finally released him, Justin was pretty certain his eyes were glazing.

He saw the lust in Brain’s own face and fully expected Brian to take him then and there on the floor amidst the dust bunnies, but instead Brian paused, glancing around him, and then his expression changed as he shivered a little.

“Come on, Sunshine,” Brian said, slinging his arm over Justin’s shoulders, “let’s go back to the Loft for a celebration fuck. We’ll have to leave christening this place until you get some heating in.”

 

**********************************************************************************************************************

 

Justin didn’t get around to doing much in his studio, not for the first few weeks after he came home. But once the let’s-fuck-like-bunnies-every-time-we-get-half-a-chance honeymoon stage had worn off a little, he threw himself into the project with a new enthusiasm. It wasn’t only because he had no intention of sitting around being Brian’s kept boy: they’d gotten used to living alone and both of them needed time to adjust to sharing their space with another person again. Their relationship would always be volatile, and they were always going to lock horns occasionally: a couple of minor spats confirmed Justin’s opinion that the studio would also provide a refuge to which he could retreat when the tension started building, giving them both a chance to cool off before words were spoken that might open old wounds and old insecurities. So he swept and scrubbed and painted, coming back to the Loft covered with grime and his hair spiked with whitewash until Brian bitched about grit in the shower tray and paint on his pillowslips. He could have finished quicker if he’d accepted the offers of help from Ben and Michael and especially from Emmett, but Justin wanted this to be his project and his alone. Still, it wasn’t much over a week before he was done and enlisting Daphne’s help to transport his heavier supplies in her car. They hit the charity stores for a few basic furniture essentials, and then he was opening the door with its brand new heavy duty Yale lock and proudly showing Brian the transformed studio with its stark white walls and ceilings and the winter sun streaming through the sparkling windows. 

 

TBC

 

 

 

CHAPTER TWO

 

It began quietly enough: so quietly that Justin wasn’t even aware of it. In fact, it began with a song. 

Justin first recalled hearing it the day he was supposed to meet Emmett for lunch, the day he was trying to get the third layer of primer on a new canvas he was preparing. He didn’t know how long it had been playing: it just seemed to seep into his consciousness, faint and directionless, so that he couldn’t tell whether it was drifting up from one of the rooms below or from the neighbouring property. 

Miss Otis regrets she’s unable to lunch today, Madam,  
Miss Otis regrets she’s unable to lunch today …..

Justin cocked his head to listen. It was a recording of some sort, obviously: a woman singing a lilting, rather melancholy melody to an orchestral accompaniment, with a scratchy, tinny quality that made him think of the old record collection his grand father used to have, and the antique wind-up player that had been the old man’s pride and joy. On special occasions like birthdays or Christmas he would stand Justin in front of the huge brass trumpet, place the needle on the edge of the thick plastic disc of an old 78 record and let him listen entranced to the eerily sexless, crackling recording of voices and music from a time long before his birth. Perhaps he’d even listened to this song; it sounded familiar in an odd way.

She is sorry to be delayed,  
But last evening down in Lover's Lane she strayed.  
Madam,   
Miss Otis regrets she's unable to lunch today …

The sound of someone knocking interrupted his thoughts. He opened the door to find Emmett, dressed in a short white faux-fur jacket and tight lemon pants, leaning against the wall and breathing hard.

“Honey, I wish you’d told me there wasn’t an elevator.”

“Sorry, Em.” Justin eyed the assorted bags Emmett was clutching. “Had a busy morning?”

“Just a little retail therapy,” Emmett replied airily. He swished past Justin into the studio, ass cheeks twitching perkily. Then his gait slowed as he took in his surroundings. “Oh. Oh, my.” He turned to Justin with an overly bright smile. “Well, this is nice!”

Justin laughed. “It’s okay, Em. I’m afraid I didn’t furnish it with visitors in mind.” He crossed back to the canvas and picked up his brush. “I just have to get the rest of this primer on before it dries … I’ll only be ten minutes or so.”

“Oh, don’t mind me, Sweetie. I’ll just relax here on this … comfortable-looking futon and get my breath back. You go right ahead.”

Justin began to apply the gesso again, his strokes long and smooth to ensure a smooth finish. 

“You won’t believe the bargains I picked up,” Emmett was saying behind him. “I started off at Torso because I still get such a good discount there, and I found this divine little number in lavender … just wait till you see it, it makes the colour of my eyes look all smoky and smouldery, just like Liz’s … and then of course I had to find a few teensy matching accessories …”

Justin wasn’t listening. He had zoned Emmett out, concentrating on what he was doing, and he didn’t even notice that Emmett had stopped chattering until he suddenly asked: “Is it always so draughty in here?”

Justin turned to look at him, surprised by his tone of voice. Emmett was perched on the edge of the futon; his knees pressed together, his arms wrapped around himself. He was peering over his shoulder nervously.

Justin smiled. “Yeah, those windows are pretty loose. Put the heater on if you’re cold … I’m nearly done.” He studied Emmett’s face. “Are you okay, Em? You’re kind of pale.”

“I … I’m not really sure,” Emmett stammered, looking flustered and jumping to his feet. “If it’s okay with you, Sugar, I’ll wait outside for you, in that sweet little park across the street. I think the paint fumes are making me feel a little queasy.” 

And he was gone before Justin could say anything. He hadn’t even stopped to pick up his bags.

Justin finished priming his canvas, washed his brush and his hands before picking up Emmett’s abandoned shopping and heading down to meet his friend. 

He’d forgotten all about the song. And if he even noticed the scent of lilacs suddenly permeating the room, he put it down to Emmett’s new cologne.

 

******************************************************************************************************************************

 

“Fuck!” Justin yelled, throwing down his brush in frustration.

It was beyond infuriating. When he was away from the studio, his brain teemed with ideas for new pieces: vast abstract canvasses full of light and movement, works that would capture all the urgency, passion and despair that New York had come to represent: but every time he stood in front of an easel with a brush in his hand and his palette loaded with paint, all his inspiration seemed to drain out of him and he was left gazing impotently at a stubbornly pristine, blank canvas.

“I don’t know what the fuck’s wrong!” he complained to Brian that night, lying on his back with his head on Brian’s shoulder. “I just can’t get started!”

Brian shrugged. “You’ve had blocks before. You just work through it.”

“I know that!” Justin snapped, a little more sharply than he’d intended. “This is different! I have plenty of ideas … I just don’t seem to be able to translate any of them onto canvas!”

He felt Brian’s fingers twining his hair. “Maybe you’re missing New York,” he suggested quietly.

“No, I’m not,” Justin replied, turning to look into Brian’s face. He smiled. “I’m really not.” He gazed up into the shadows of the Loft’s roof. “I’ll tell you what I missed. Do you remember that black eight inch dildo you bought me the last time you visited?”

Brian smirked. “Vividly.”

“Well, about a week after you left I was lying on my crummy little bed trying to sleep, missing you so badly it hurt. So I dug out the dildo and tried to pretend it was you.”

“You could have called me,” Brian huffed.

“It was like, three a.m. Anyway: after I’d given my imagination a good workout, I was sort of floating on this warm haze, you know, drifting to sleep, when I suddenly heard this helicopter. Not that unusual for New York; only it kept getting closer and closer until it stopped sounding like a helicopter and started sounding like jet engines. I swear, Brian, I was lying there waiting for the crash. And all I could think of was that they were going to have to tell my Mom that they’d pulled me out of the rubble with an eight inch dildo stuck up my ass. It was the most surreal moment of my life.”

Brian stared at him with his mouth open and then curled up in a ball, howling with laughter. “You’re a fucking freak, you know that? And how the fuck did that help you decide to come home?”

“Dunno, it just felt … symbolic, or something. Like a warning. Like I should be putting my energy into what was important, not making do with seconds.”

“Then maybe you just need a little reminder of the real thing,” Brian had answered, leaning down for a kiss that had rapidly turned into something more. 

Unfortunately, Brian hadn’t been able to fuck the problem away, either. Not even with the eight inch black dildo.

Justin couldn’t put his finger on what was causing it. The only thing he was sure about was that it wasn’t the fault of the studio. The light was great, he felt relaxed and comfortable, there was no reason on earth why he shouldn’t be able to work … he just couldn’t seem to focus on an idea, couldn’t even begin to start laying out an image.

Desperate to start working on something, anything, he decided to fall back on his most familiar subject and his greatest source of inspiration … Brian. Justin had no need of a model; he had whole sketchbooks filled with drawings of Brian’s face, of his naked body, or just with parts of Brian’s anatomy – his hands, his back, his cock – and Brian’s image had found its way into many of Justin’s paintings. Usually it was in a rather more ambiguous form: a suggestion of his figure or even as an abstract representation of colours and shapes. This time Justin decided he was going to try something more ambitious in an attempt to kick-start his creative juices: a classical portrait of Brian’s face, something he’d never attempted in oils because he hadn’t thought that his fine motor skills were capable of sustaining the controlled detail required. 

He chose a piece of charcoal and started confidently, fleshing out the familiar outline of Brian’s face and shoulders, shading with his fingers, and as he did so he found himself slipping thankfully into a zone where he worked almost without conscious thought, his creation taking on a life of its own as the image began to emerge. He worked for a while, completely absorbed in the marks the charcoal was making, and then stepped back to look at the canvas.

He blinked. He’d had the image of Brian in his head as he’d been sketching, but somehow he seemed to have got the proportions wrong. The cheekbones were a little too high; the eyes a little too close together; the jaw much too heavy. Justin frowned, and moved his hand to rub out the offending lines: instead he found himself sketching in a mouth, adding more shading to the cheeks, enlivening the eyes with pupils. He continued to add detail, not really thinking about what he was doing, letting his hand move automatically until finally the urge to keep drawing ebbed and he stopped to consider what he’d created.

He saw looking back at him a handsome man with dark hair slicked back from high temples; with heavy brows and hooded, intimidating eyes. The lips were full and sensual; the jaw strong and determined. A small, neat moustache adorned his upper lip, and Justin’s first thought was that for some fucked-up reason he’d drawn Freddie Mercury. But the shapes of the mouth and nose were different, and this face, although it might express both passion and intelligence, also managed to convey a latent arrogance and cruelty that Justin didn’t find attractive at all. However there was no denying the power and intensity of the man’s direct gaze: it was an imposing face, and an intriguing one.

He cocked his head, chewing a thumbnail absently, not registering the fact that music was playing faintly.

When she woke up and found that her dream of love was gone, Madam,  
She ran to the man who had led her so far astray.  
And from under a velvet gown,  
She drew a gun and shot her lover down,  
Madam.  
Miss Otis regrets she's unable to lunch today.

Justin went to get his paints.

 

TBC

 

 

 

CHAPTER THREE

“Justin! Justin!” Daphne’s voice rose in aggravation as she poked at him vigorously with her toe. “You’re not listening!”

“Sorry, Daph.” He jerked himself back from his musings about his portrait-in-progress and tried to pay attention to the latest crisis in her love-life.

“He’s just so ignorant sometimes,” she complained, curled up at one end of the sofa clutching a consolation tub of chocolate chip ice cream. “Why do I always choose assholes? Do I have ‘idiot’ tattooed on my forehead or something?”

“So are you guys splitting up again?” Justin asked. It would be the third time in the last six months.

“Dunno.” Daphne sucked her spoon moodily. “I mean, he’s really hot and everything … and funny. Sometimes. And the sex is, like, awesome. If only he wasn’t such an asshole.”

“You go for assholes, Daph,” Justin reminded her, grinning. “It started with Brian.”

She flicked ice cream at him, and he whacked her ankle. “Mind the sofa! Brian will have a cow.”

Daphne stuck her tongue out. “Maybe we just need a little hiatus.”

“Well, you’re welcome to crash at the studio for a few days if it helps.”

Daphne goggled at him, spoon halted halfway to her mouth. “What, on my own?”

“No, I’ll just tell Brian that I’m ditching him to keep my fag-hag company. Of course, on your own.”

“Thanks, Justin; but no thanks. I mean, no offence or anything, but your studio is seriously creepy. Haven’t you noticed?”

Justin frowned. “What do you mean … creepy?”

Daphne wiggled her shoulders uncomfortably. “I don’t know … it’s so cold. And it’s empty and echoey. It makes noises.”

“Well, duh. It’s old, Daph. It’s going to make noises.”

“Not those kind of noises, stupid! Noises like … tapping. Or scratching.”

“Rats,” Justin told her seriously, waiting for the meltdown.

“Omigod, you’ve got rats?” Daphne squealed, looking like she was about to pee herself.

“Relax, I haven’t seen any. But I wouldn’t be surprised.”

She glared at him. “Then I’m definitely never setting foot in there again! And I wish you’d told me that before you asked me to help you move in! I’d rather you had a ghost than a rat!”

Justin’s eyebrows shot up as far as Brian’s could have. “You think my studio’s haunted?” he asked incredulously. “What, because it’s draughty and makes spooky noises? Daph, it’s at the top of a hundred year old building with no double-glazing or insulation. Of course it’s cold. And it makes noises because the pipes are as old as the building, and bits of plaster fall off the walls, and the floorboards are warped. And maybe there are rats. It’s not haunted.” He hooted with laughter at the thought.

“Umm … no. Of course not.” Daphne’s cheeks were pink with embarrassment. “There’s no such thing as ghosts.”

“Then why are you being such a wuss about it?”

She looked at him for a moment, and her expression was so serious that he stifled his giggles so as not to hurt her feelings. “Okay,” she said, putting her ice cream down on the coffee table and sitting up very straight. “After I’d spent all morning helping you drag all your shit up all those stairs, you very generously promised me a coffee, remember?”

Justin rolled his eyes. “Yessss.”

“And you went downstairs to use the john before we left?”

“I’ll take your word for it.”

“Well, you did … and I was standing there waiting for you, and at first it was freakishly quiet … no sound of traffic or people outside; nothing. But then I started hearing all these weird little noises. Like someone was … I don’t know, tapping their nails on something, or scratching something. Like someone was moving around. I started feeling a little freaked, and I was even thinking about going downstairs to wait for you. But I told myself I was just being a girl, and I knew you’d only laugh at me, so I went to look out of the window to try and distract myself. And I got the weirdest feeling that someone was standing right behind me, looking over my shoulder. I thought it was you, but then I realised it couldn’t be because I’d have seen your reflection in the glass. But I was absolutely sure someone was there, so I turned round.”

“And?”

“And there wasn’t anyone,” Daphne finished lamely.

Justin stared at her for a moment open-mouthed. “Wow,” he said earnestly. “That must have been absolutely terrifying for you.”

“Asshole!” She picked up the spoon and assaulted him it. “You weren’t there. I know what I mean.”

“But Daph,” he giggled, batting her hands away, “you said you don’t believe in ghosts!”

“I don’t believe in God, either. It doesn’t mean I’m not scared of him.”

 

TBC

 

 

CHAPTER FOUR

 

So maybe he’d been a little hasty in claiming the studio wasn’t haunted. 

Maybe weird things had always been happening and he just hadn’t noticed: he was an artist, after all, and not a very tidy one at that. Brian was always complaining about his leaving shit scattered about, so how could Justin be expected to notice if a mug had been moved, or a book wasn’t exactly where he left it? 

His art supplies, though … that was something else. You bet he noticed when they started being interfered with.

When it first started happening he worried that it might be some new effect of his head injury … short term memory loss, or the early onset of dementia, or some fucking thing. Because he would never leave the cap off one of his tubes of oils, or leave a brush lying around without having cleaned it and put it away. And he was absolutely certain he’d left his cleaning rags soaking in the sink: he certainly had no recollection of having wrung them out and hung them at the window to dry. Just like he had no memory of having graded the Caran D’Ache graphites in his pencil drawer by hardness, although apparently he had.

It wasn’t as though anyone else, other than Brian, had a copy of the key to his new lock. Besides, even if somebody had, why would they come in just to move around some pencils and paints and finish his washing? It made no sense.

It was when his favourite Winsor and Newton round hog seemingly disappeared from the face of the earth that Justin really began to freak. He went through the studio like a man possessed, searching every drawer, every inch of flooring, behind, under and on every article of furniture he owned. He pulled the futon apart three times. He even checked inside the ice box and the microwave.

He went back to the Loft thoroughly pissed with himself. It wasn’t only that the brush was his favourite and he really needed it for the fine details of his Mystery Man: it was part of a set Brian had bought him, the first true birthday present Justin had ever received from him, and Justin wouldn’t have lost one of them for worlds. Because that was what he thought; that somehow, in his absent-minded-memory-for-shit-whatever-the-fuck-it-was, he must have thrown it out in the trash.

He went back to the studio the next day and searched it again, with exactly the same results. He tried to work a little more on the portrait, because he was very close to finishing it – or would be if he had the right fucking brush - but he really couldn’t concentrate. So he decided to give up for the day: he’d go out, buy a replacement brush, and he’d get his act together. No more leaving stuff lying around. No more losing things.

He was standing at the sink, cleaning out his turp jars, when he suddenly put it all together.

The noises. The cold. The weird man in the painting. The song. Things being moved around. The way all his friends seemed so uncomfortable here.

And then he knew exactly what to do.

“Please can I have my brush back?” he asked aloud. “I don’t mind you borrowing it, but it was a birthday present from Brian and it really means a lot to me. Besides, I need it to finish the painting. So I’d be really grateful if I could have it back now.”

He kept his face determinedly to the wall as he finished rinsing his jars, set them on the drainer and dried his hands, even though the faint scent of lilacs seemed to swirl about him. Then he turned slowly around.

His missing brush was lying in the middle of his trestle table like it had been there all along.

Justin felt a little shiver that was half fear, half excitement. “Thank you,” he said clearly.

He picked up his brush and put it away in the drawer with the others.

 

******************************************************************************************************************************

 

Justin was lying on his stomach, half asleep as Brian straddled him, gently massaging aloe vera into his ass and thighs. Justin had long ago given up his attempts to persuade Brian that just because he was pale and marked easily didn’t mean that his skin was fragile, and that any mementoes from their occasional foray into what Brian liked to refer to as The English Vice wouldn’t do any permanent harm. He’d come to understand that this was an important role for Brian; that he needed to reassure Justin that he was taken care of and cherished, and that any pain Brian might have caused would be rapidly soothed by his gentle fingers. Nowadays Justin just tended to lie there and bask in the attention. But because he was relaxed and half asleep, and because he always chose a bad moment to open his mouth when in a post-orgasmic stupor, Justin found himself sleepily saying, “I think my studio’s haunted, Brian.”

He felt Brian’s hands still, and then he huffed. “Way to kill a moment, Sunshine.”

“Sorry. But I really do.”

Brian moved off him and reached for his cigarettes. He put one in his mouth and plumped up the pillows before settling back on them comfortably. “Why?” he asked around the cigarette as he flicked his lighter.

Justin blinked lazily. “Lots of reasons. The way everyone reacts to the place. The cold … the weird noises …”

“Sunshine …”

“Yeah, I know. It’s old, it’s draughty. Blah, blah, blah. I’ve had this exact same conversation with Daphne.”

Brian blew a smoke ring towards the rafters. “Then you should listen to her.”

“No, she was the one saying it was haunted!” Justin protested, rolling onto his side and propping his head on his hand. “I was the one with all the rational explanations.”

“So what made you change your mind?”

“Well, first I started hearing this song all the time … this record.”

“Justin, you’re surrounded by students. So how is hearing music surprising?”

“No, this is like … really old. Like one of those old 78’s. … all scratchy and jumpy.”

Brian shrugged. “So one of them is into vinyl. What else?”

“Somebody keeps moving things. And one of my brushes disappeared.”

Brian choked on an inhale. Then he started laughing. In fact, Justin thought sourly, it was just as well Brian wasn’t wearing socks because otherwise he would have laughed them off. “Sunshine, you’re always losing shit! I’m surprised you ever manage to find anything amongst all the crap you leave lying around!”

“Yeah, but I searched everywhere, Brian. I mean, everywhere, several times. So then I just got this idea to ask for it back … and there it was, just lying on the table.”

“Then it must have been there all along, and you just didn’t see it!” Brian rolled his eyes. “Jesus Christ, Justin, there are no such things as fucking ghosts. You know that.”

“Well, I thought I did. But I know what I saw, Brian.” He sat up and reached out for Brian’s cigarette and took a drag. “Don’t you feel uncomfortable there? Everyone else does.”

Brian shook his head. “It’s just a room. Cold, sure, but so is the Loft. No-one’s ever suggested I might have a ghost.”

“Exactly! So there must be something else going on! And what about the new painting?”

“What about it?” Brian asked, repossessing his cigarette.

“I told you I’d managed to get over my block … but the guy I ended up painting … well, it’s just weird.”

Brian raised his eyebrows. “Who is he?”

“That’s the thing, I have no idea. His face just sort of … popped into my head. But it’s not like …” he paused, struggling to find a way to make Brian understand what he meant. “When you try to draw a face without a model … just from your imagination … it’s always generic, you know? Like a doll, with no character. This guy … he’s different. It’s like he is real.”

“Hot?” Brian asked, wiggling his eyebrows.

“Yeah, I guess. But … probably not in a good way.”

“And you think he’s the ghost?”

“I don’t know. I think he might be … it’s only since I started working on him that I started hearing the song … and that’s when all the other strange shit started happening.”

Brian studied him closely. “So … what? You want to find somewhere else?”

“No!” Justin shook his head vehemently. “It’s perfect for me. And I feel really comfortable there, which is why I couldn’t understand why nobody else seemed to like it. I don’t feel threatened or scared about it at all. I’d just like to know what’s going on.”

Brian reached over to stub out his cigarette and swung his legs out of bed. “Come on, then.”

Justin stared at him. “Where are we going?”

“I’m intrigued by your mystery man,” Brian said, pulling on a pair of jeans. “I want to see him.”

“What, now?” Justin protested. He was beginning to wish he’d kept his mouth shut.

“No time like the present, Sunshine,” Brian told him brightly, stuffing a couple of condoms into his pocket. “Plus, it’s time we christened the place. That ought to give your phantom friend something to think about.”

 

TBC 

 

 

 

CHAPTER FIVE

 

The studio seemed even larger at night, with the darkness pressing against the windows and the shadows stretching across the floor like they were reaching for something. Justin cast a quick look around, but nothing seemed to have been disturbed. Brian dropped the duvet he’d thoughtfully brought with them onto the futon and strode over to the easel standing by the window. He studied it for a long while, then turned towards Justin with a smirk.

“Well, I see what you mean. I’d fuck him.”

Justin bit back a grin. “Sorry, but he looks like a top to me.”

“Since when did that matter?” Brian turned back to the portrait. “Seriously, Justin, you’re right. This doesn’t look like a face you’ve dreamed up.”

“Then who is he?”

“Someone you’ve seen at some point in your life. Someone who made enough of an impression for you to recall his image, even if you don’t consciously remember it.”

Justin screwed up his nose. “I don’t really buy that, Brian.”

Brain’s hands were reaching for his shoulders, turning him away from the painting. “That’s because you’re an artist.” He lowered his head until his mouth was brushing Justin’s throat. “You’re a romantic by nature,” he murmured. “You believe in the impossible.”

“Unlike you,” Justin replied, closing his eyes and shivering at the movements of Brian’s lips on his skin.

“Yeah. I’m a big, bad, hard-headed realist. That’s why we’re so fucking good together.”

Justin nodded. “Yin and Yang.”

“Dolce and Gabbana.” Brian’s hands were creeping down the back of Justin’s cargoes.

“Pizza and garlic bread.” 

He felt Brian chuckle. “Fire and ice,” he whispered in Justin’s ear. “Talking of which …. let’s warm this fucking ice-box up with a little old-fashioned fire of our own.”

 

******************************************************************************************************************************

 

Justin woke with the early morning sun streaming through the blindless windows and falling directly across his face. “Fuck …” he protested, turning over so that his back was to the window. His movements disturbed Brian, who scowled and threw an arm across his eyes.

“Remind me why I thought it was a good idea to come over here last night?”

“Don’t ask me, that was all you.” Justin snuggled down further under the duvet, fully intending to go back to sleep.

Brian sat up, groaning. “Christ! This thing might be okay for Japanese-sized people like you, but my fucking back’s killing me.”

Justin smiled to himself. Brian was not a morning person at the best of times.

“Where’s the john?” Brian asked.

“There’s a communal one on the next floor. Down the end of the hall.”

He could imagine Brian’s expression. “Fuck that! I’ll piss in the sink.”

Justin’s eyes flew open and he shot upright. “You will not! I’ve never pissed in yours!”

“There’s a difference between my Italian marble bathroom suite and that monstrosity,” Brian snorted, nodding at the sink in the corner. “But I guess I’d never hear the end of it. Where the fuck are my jeans?”

“I think you threw them that way,” Justin answered, waving his arm vaguely in the direction of the chest where he kept his art supplies. He buried himself in the duvet again.

He heard Brian get up and stomp across the studio. There followed a moment’s silence before Brian let out a bellow that was half-fury and half-anguish, which made Justin bolt upright again.

“JUSTIN!”

Brian was standing stark naked beside the futon, his face a picture of outrage, his hair sticking up wildly, his arms outspread. In one hand he was holding an object which looked to Justin like an empty varnish bottle. In the other he clutched his jeans; his dripping, very smelly jeans. “Look what the fuck you’ve done!” Brian roared.

“What I’ve done?” Justin repeated, fuddled. “What the fuck, Brian?”

“You left this fucking bottle without a top on it!” Brian raged. “My jeans … my brand-new fucking Hugo Boss jeans … must have knocked it off that fucking chest, and now look at them! Fucking ruined!” He shook them at Justin wrathfully, scattering drops of varnish across his own feet as well as the floorboards.

“Okay,” Justin replied, any humour he might have found in Brian’s Drama Queen moment evaporating under his accusation. “To begin with, even if I did leave a bottle of varnish sitting there without a cap on it – which, by the way, I totally didn’t – but even if I had, it’s my fucking place and I’ll do as I like in it. And if your brand-new fucking Hugo Boss jeans meant that much to you, then perhaps you shouldn’t have worn them here in the first place! And you really shouldn’t have just slung them across the room without any idea of what you were slinging them at!”

They glared at each other. “Have you got something I can borrow?” Brian asked eventually, his tone frigidly polite.

Justin threw back the duvet and stamped over to the small closet in the wall where he kept a couple of blankets, towels and a few spare clothes. He dug out his baggiest cargoes and threw them at Brian before collecting his own garments from the various spots where Brian had carelessly thrown them, and dressing in silence. He bundled up the duvet in his arms and shot Brian a glance. 

Justin bit the inside of his cheek hard. Really, savagely hard. The cargoes were a good six inches too short, and there was an awful lot of Brian’s shins on display between where the pants ended and his boots began. Paired with his Gucci leather jacket, it was definitely not a good look. 

Brian’s eyes dared him to make a comment. Justin put his head down and buried his face in the duvet, smothering his laughter. He followed Brian to the door, blinking the tears from his eyes: as he was locking up behind them, he could have sworn he heard someone inside chuckling quietly.

 

******************************************************************************************************************************

TBC

 

 

 

CHAPTER SIX

 

Justin sat in the booth opposite Emmett, absent-mindedly stirring his coffee and watching his friend dismember a pink-frosted donut. He didn’t often come to the Diner, not since Debbie had officially retired, but it was still the most convenient place for an impromptu meeting. Ben had dropped in to spend his lunch break with Michael, and they were occupying the other seats in the booth. “Emmett,” Justin said slowly, “I think my studio’s haunted.”

Emmett stared at him, caught mid-chew. He swallowed hard, licked the frosting from his lips and then reached out to take Justin’s hand. “Oh, thank God, Baby, because I didn’t know how to tell you! You seemed so happy there and I didn’t want to upset you.”

“What?” Michael turned to goggle at Justin. “You’re studio’s what?”

“Haunted,” Justin told him. 

“Oh, it certainly is,” Emmett agreed, renewing his attack on the donut. “I was just sitting there, minding my own business … and someone kept touching my neck. At first, I thought it was just a draught. But it wasn’t: it was fingers … cold fingers,” he added, shuddering at the memory.

“But Justin … there’s no such things as ghosts.”

“I wouldn’t go so far as to say that, Michael,” Ben objected mildly. 

Michael blinked. “Oh, come on. You don’t really mean to tell me you believe in that shit?”

Ben shrugged his huge shoulders. “Life is energy, right? And the first law of thermodynamics states that energy can neither be created nor destroyed … it simply changes into another form. I’ve always thought that it’s an excellent argument in support of rebirth and reincarnation.”

“Yeah, but ghosts … you may as well say you believe in vampires, or werewolves.”

Ben smiled. “Michael, you’re a Catholic and you come from a long line of Catholics. Your entire religion is based on the premise that a man came back from the dead. The Holy Ghost, remember?”

Michael frowned. “That’s different.”

“How?”

“Because Jesus had to prove that there is life after death.”

“I thought he’d already proved that when he raised Lazarus.”

Justin rolled his eyes. “Can we leave the theological discussions for later? I have a pressing problem here.” He described the things that had been happening at the studio, ending with the night visit and the ruining of Brian’s new jeans.

“Wow.” Michael sniggered. “I bet he was beyond pissed.”

“You have no idea,” Justin sighed. “The last time I saw him that upset was when the Loft got burgled. He still isn’t speaking to me.”

“Are you sure you didn’t leave the bottle there?” Ben asked.

Justin ran a hand through his hair. “I have no recollection of it. I can’t imagine why I would have taken varnish out anyway, because the painting isn’t finished yet … and even if I had, why would I have taken the cap off? But no. I can’t prove that I didn’t do it, anymore than I can prove that I haven’t done all the other weird shit myself. Or that my brush wasn’t on the table all the time, like Brian thinks. But if that’s the case, and I am suffering from episodes of amnesia, then I need to know about it.” He took a thoughtful sip of his coffee. “But I don’t think it is me. I think the studio is haunted. I just need to prove it.”

“Well, you don’t need to convince me, Baby,” Emmett said. “There was an old haunted house in Hazelhurst where a man had been murdered, and that place had just the same effect on me as your studio does.”

“I was thinking about holding a séance,” Justin told them.

“Ooh, yes!” Emmett squealed. “You’ll need to get a table, and enough chairs for all of us … and Teddy ... that’s what, five? Six if you include Brian. And…”

“Oh, no! You can leave me out of it!” Michael interrupted. “Playing around with shit like Ouija boards is fucking dangerous, everyone knows that. Look what happened to that kid in The Exorcist!”

“That was a film, Michael,” Justin pointed out.

“Based on a true story! Do you want to end up possessed by a demon and vomiting green shit over everybody?”

Justin snorted. “So you don’t believe in ghosts, but you’re perfectly happy to accept the Devil?”

“Michael’s right, but for the wrong reasons,” Ben replied. “Things like Ouija boards certainly seem to tap into some deep part of the subconscious, frequently not a very good part. They shouldn’t be used lightly, and never by people who don’t know what they’re doing.”

“I know, I know!” Emmett bounced in his seat, clapping his hands excitedly. “We’ll ask Mystic Marilyn to conduct it! She’s a professional!”

“No way!” Michael protested. “She’s a weirdo!”

“She knew where Justin was when he ran away to New York. And she warned us about the tyre. And she knew the love of your life’s name began with a B!” 

“Everybody knew that,” Justin muttered sourly.

“Which stood for Ben, of course!” Emmett finished triumphantly, giving Justin’s knee a slap under the table. “Which only proves how good she is!”

“It could be an interesting experience,” Ben mused. “I wouldn’t want to take part, but I wouldn’t mind coming along as an observer.”

“You can be an impartial witness. Ooh, and if you bring a notebook you can write down everything that happens!”

“Would Debbie lend us a small table and a few chairs?” Justin asked Michael.

“Sure, provided you don’t mind lying about why you want them.”

“I’ve got a sweet little pedestal table which would be perfect!” Emmett said. “And I’m sure we can rustle up enough chairs between us. We just need to arrange an evening with Marilyn, and we’re all set!”

“I think you’re all insane,” Michael groused. “Don’t blame me if you end up wearing your heads back to front.”

 

*****************************************************************************************************************************

 

“You’re holding a what?” Brian asked incredulously, staring at Justin over the rim of his morning coffee.

Well, at least it had got him talking.

“A séance,” Justin repeated, slapping butter on his toast. “And I’m not holding it, Mystic Marilyn is.”

Brian blinked. “Oh, well, that’s alright then. And there was me, worrying.”

“Just because she’s a trannie doesn’t mean she doesn’t know what she’s doing.” Justin took a bite and chewed reflectively. “I just want to know what’s going on … whether it’s me, or something else. Because I swear to you, Brian, I didn’t leave that varnish out. Or if I did, I don’t remember it.”

Brian put his head on one side. “Well, if you’re that concerned, you could always try consulting a real doctor instead of one of the witch variety. With the emphasis very much on ‘Witch.”

“Yeah, well, if this doesn’t work and things keep happening, then I guess I’ll have to.” Justin looked moodily at the half-eaten toast in his hand. “Anyway, I only mentioned it in case you wanted to come … Michael and Ben are going to be there, and Emmett and Ted …”

Brian hooted. “Thanks, Sunshine, but it’s Wet T Shirt night at Babylon and I’m the judge. I guess I’ll just have to leave the paranormal investigations to you and the rest of the Scooby Gang.”

“I guess you will,” Justin replied equably. It was no more than he’d expected, after all.

Brian drained his coffee. “Gotta run. Will you be here when I get home?”

“Nope. Emmett’s going to give me a hand getting everything set up for tonight.”

“So I’ll see you later.” It was a statement, but Brian’s eyes were questioning.

“Depends on what time we finish. If it goes on too late, I’ll probably stay at the studio.”

“Okay.” Brian pressed a kiss to Justin’s forehead before slipping on his overcoat and picking up his briefcase. “Have a good day, Honey!” he called in a bright falsetto. He walked out of the Loft jauntily singing to himself: 

“If there’s something strange in your neighbourhood,  
Who you gonna call?  
Ghostbusters!”

Justin sighed.

 

******************************************************************************************************************************

 

TBC

 

 

CHAPTER SEVEN

 

Mysterious Marilyn stood looking around. “It’s very cold,” she observed, drawing her shawl closer around her shoulders.

“Oh, she is good,” Ted muttered, and Emmett kicked him sharply on the ankle.

Marilyn looked haughtily down the length of her considerable nose at him. “Honey, you have no idea how good I am.” She walked over to the painting sitting on its easel and studied it, manicured finger pressed to her lips. “Interesting,” she murmured.

“Is it him?” Justin asked.

Marilyn shook her head decisively. “No. This one doesn’t walk; which is probably just as well for you. This isn’t a good face, Sweetie.”

Justin led her over to the table he and Emmett had set up. “Is this okay?” He’d printed out the letters of the alphabet on small pieces of card and arranged them in a circle facing inwards, with a card bearing the word Yes at the top of the circle and one with the word No at the bottom. A shot glass that he’d swiped from Woody’s sat in the centre of the circle next to a candle. The dining chairs loaned from Ben and Michael were placed at the four quarters.

“That’s fine, Sweetie,” Marilyn told him, moving to the chair opposite the word Yes. She seated herself gracefully and glanced around. “Well, if you’d all like to take your places, then Justin can turn out the lights.”

“Why does it always have to be dark to hold a séance?” Michael complained, sitting on the futon and pulling Ben down beside him before crowding against him nervously.

“Apart from making it easier to cheat?” Ted suggested, taking the chair on Marilyn’s left. 

“Teddy, stop giving off such negative vibrations!” Emmett chided, seating himself to the right. “The spirits will be offended and they won’t communicate!”

“Actually, I doubt they give a shit,” Marilyn replied. “Anyone got a lighter?”

Justin passed his over and waited until Marilyn lit the tall candle before flipping the light switch and plunging them all into relative darkness. He took the chair opposite Marilyn. 

“Here, Michael,” Ben said, handing over a small penlight. “Keep this trained on my notebook so I can see what I’m writing.”

“Place your hands palms down on the table,” Marilyn instructed, “with your fingers touching those of the person next to you.”

They all obeyed. Marilyn closed her eyes and leaned back her head, looking more witch-like than ever with the candle casting her angular features into sharp relief. She took several slow, deep breaths and then her eyes suddenly opened and she looked at Justin quizzically. “Something about lunch?” she asked. “Being late for lunch? Does that make sense?”

“Ooh, ooh!” Emmett cried, wiggling with excitement. “That must be the day I came here, when we were going out and you were running late because you wanted to finish your canvas!”

Marilyn frowned. “No, it’s a woman’s voice I hear.”

Justin felt a shiver go down his back. “There’s this song I keep hearing,” he offered. “It sounds like an old record. Something about some woman who can’t make it to lunch … Miss Otis, I think …”

“Ooh, ooh!” Emmett squeaked again. “Miss Otis Regrets! I remember that! My Aunt Lula loved that song! Miss Otis regrets she’s unable to lunch today, Madam …” he warbled unsteadily.

“Oh, my God! That’s exactly it!” Justin exclaimed. “I thought someone was playing it on an old gramophone at first, but then I kept hearing it. What’s it about?”

“It’s a Cole Porter song, I think,” Ben replied, looking up from his notebook. “It’s about a society lady who fell in love with a man who then betrayed her. She shot him dead and then got lynched by a mob, I seem to remember.”

“Sounds like an opera,” Ted grunted.

“Let’s see if we can make contact.” Marilyn turned the shot glass upside down and placed her right index finger on the base. Everyone else followed suit. “We are trying to speak to the spirit who inhabits this room,” Marilyn intoned. “If you can hear me, please make yourself known.”

Nothing happened. Justin concentrated on Marilyn’s scarlet-painted nail, trying to open his mind to anything that might be lurking in the ether. “Can you tell us your name?” Marilyn asked.

The silence grew heavier.

“Is it me or is it getting colder in here?” Michael whispered urgently.

Marilyn closed her eyes again. “We don’t mean you any harm. Can you please try to make a sign to let us know you are with us?”

The only noise Justin could hear was the sound of his own heartbeat. Then Michael hissed, “Listen!”

They all heard slow, heavy footsteps moving along the hall outside the studio, and they looked at each other wide-eyed. There was a long moment of silence: then the door behind them creaked, and every head shot round as it swung slowly open, revealing nothing but the blackness outside. The candle guttered and went out.

“Oh my fucking God!” Emmett shrieked, leaping to his feet and sending his chair flying.

“You called?” Brian answered, stepping into the room.

“You asshole!” Michael screeched, releasing the death grip he’d had on Ben’s arm. “I nearly crapped myself, you fucking moron!”

Brian was leaning against the door, laughing hysterically. “Mikey, you are so pathetic. And really, Honeycutt, I haven’t heard a top C like that since Debbie caught her tits in the zipper of her sleeping bag on the Liberty Ride!” He wiped his eyes and started unsteadily towards them, still giggling, and Justin realised gloomily that he was either extremely drunk or wasted. Or both.

“What are you doing here?” he demanded, getting up to take Brian’s arm and guide him towards the table. “You said you were judging the contest at Babylon!”

Brian smiled at him fondly. “Been there, got the T shirt, you could say. The winner has been chosen and suitable prizes awarded. So I figured I’d come over and see how the ghost hunt was going.”

“Please tell me you didn’t drive!”

“Nope. I got a cab, like a good boy.”

“I thought you said this was all bullshit?”

“It is. I just wanted to liven things up so you wouldn’t be too disappointed.”

Justin thrust him into the chair he’d vacated and looked around for something else to seat himself on, but Emmett was already offering his own chair, glaring at Brian as he did so. “You take my place, Sweetie. I think I’m going to join Michael and Ben. My nerves are a little bit shaken up.”

“You,” Justin hissed as he re-lit the candle, “sit still and behave yourself.”

Brian threw a half-assed salute before reaching out unsteadily to place his finger on the glass.

“Let’s try again,” Marilyn sighed. She did the closed eyes and deep-breathing thing for a few seconds before asking: “Is anybody there?” 

Brian barked a laugh, and Ted snickered.

Marilyn’s eyes flew open, blazing. “Do you mind?” she snapped, staring them into silence. “I’m trying to work here, you know!” She composed herself for the third time and then asked: “Does anyone want to speak to us tonight?” 

The glass hitched, and then moved slowly to Yes. “Brian …” Justin said warningly.

“Wasn’t me,” Brian protested with such an innocent look that Justin knew he was lying. He pinched Brian’s arm with his free hand, hard.

They settled down again. And just when Justin was beginning to think this really was a complete waste of time he heard Emmett say, “Can anyone else smell lilacs?” and he felt a tiny tremor beneath his finger, as though the glass was vibrating. Suddenly it jerked forward, jerked again, and then began to describe a slow, wobbly circle, grating on the wood as it moved. 

“Theodore, stop pushing the fucking thing,” Brian demanded. 

“Not guilty,” Ted replied, his eyebrows riding up as he watched the moving glass.

“I think we’re in business,” Marilyn said. “Welcome, spirit. Do you have a message for anybody here?”

The glass circled again, then swooped towards the letter B. Ted started calling each letter out so that Ben could write them down.

“B … e … a… u …t … i … f … u … l … s … u … n … s … h …”

“BRIAN!” every voice accused, but Brian shook his head. He was frowning. “It’s not me,” he protested, sounding perplexed.

“Is that your message?” Marilyn asked as the glass resumed its slow circling.

“No,” Ted relayed. “It’s spelling again …”

The glass was moving easily now, slipping from letter to letter, and Justin realised that he was actually having difficulty keeping his finger in contact. Brian, who always had co-ordination issues when he was trashed, kept losing touch with it altogether. 

“a … s … k … c … h … a … l … m … e … r …s …” 

“It’s gibberish,” Michael said, peering at the letters Ben was writing down. 

“Not necessarily,” Ben replied. “We don’t know where the word breaks are, remember.”

The glass started circling again. 

“Is that all of your message to Justin?”

“Yes.”

“What is your name?” Marilyn asked quietly.

The glass seemed to hesitate, making several false starts before finally spelling out: “f … i … s … h.” 

“Fish?” Brian repeated. “What kind of a fucking name is that?”

The glass flew off the table and smacked him right on the nose. “Ow … fuck. Ow!” He clapped a hand to his face. “Who the fuck did that?”

“Um … nobody, Brian,” Ted answered. His eyes were bugging out. 

“Did you see that? Oh my God, did you see that?” Emmett squawked, his arms locked around Michael’s neck. Michael was clutching him back just as hard, his mouth open in shock.

“What?” Ben demanded. “I missed it. What happened?”

“Some fucker threw the fucking glass and fucking hit me on the fucking nose!” Brian shouted, making things quite clear. He dabbed at it with his fingers. “Am I bleeding?”

Justin ran to turn the lights on and they all clustered round Brian, gazing at the fat red welt right in the middle of his nose. “Do you think it’s broken?” Michael asked, prodding with a forefinger.

“Yours fucking will be, if you don’t stop poking me!” 

“I’ve never had that happen before,” Marilyn said, sounding a little rattled. “The spirit world isn’t usually violent.”

“It wasn’t a fucking spirit, you silly twat, somebody picked the thing up and threw it at me!” Brian ranted.

“Brian, I’m sorry, but that’s not what happened,” Ted protested.

“No, Sugar, I was watching and I saw it just fly up at you!” Emmett agreed.

“Then you’re both delusional! I’m telling you, some .. body, some fucking body, picked up that glass …”

“Who?” Justin interrupted. “Do you think I would throw a glass at your face? Or Ted? Or Marilyn? We’re the only suspects.”

“Okay,” Ben said reasonably, “how about this for a possible explanation? One of you just leaned on it too hard, and it flipped up. An accident.”

Brian stared at him. Then he nodded slowly. “I guess I could go with that.”

“Well, I don’t!” Michael snapped. “You didn’t even see what happened, Ben! It just … flew at his face! I told you this was a fucking bad idea! Well, I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’ve seen enough. I’m going home … now!”

Marilyn nodded. “I agree, we should call it a night. I’m sorry, Sweetie, but I don’t think there’s a lot more I can do to help you.” 

“I’ll walk you down,” Justin told her. He waited until they were out of the studio before asking, “Well? What do you think?”

“There’s a strong presence. I knew that the moment I stepped through the door. It’s not a happy spirit … I felt great sadness, and loneliness. But I didn’t pick up any hostility … at least, not directed towards you, Sweetie. On the contrary, the spirit seems quite taken by you. The message was for Beautiful Sunshine, remember.”

Justin looked at her in surprise. “I thought that was Brian fooling around.”

Marilyn shook her head. “I’ve been in this business too long not to know when someone’s pushing the glass. Your man was playing with us when he first sat down, but that message was genuine. I’d stake my next pedicure on it.”

They’d reached the end of the hall, and Justin stopped at the top of the staircase. “Be careful in those heels, the lights aren’t as good as they should be. You’d better let me go first.”

“Quite the little gentleman, aren’t you?” Marilyn said, smiling. “What a refreshing change.” She followed him down, trailing her right hand lightly along the balustrade to keep her balance.

“So if it isn’t hostile, why did it attack Brian?” Justin asked.

Marilyn chuckled. “I’d hardly call it an attack. It could have hit him in the eye, or knocked out a tooth if it really wanted to hurt him. No, I think Brian was just being an asshole and the spirit punished him for it. Like when it poured varnish over his jeans. It hasn’t damaged anything of yours, has it? Or thrown anything at you, or even scared you?”

“No,” Justin replied honestly. “I always feel really happy here, and welcome.”

“That’s because it obviously likes you being around. And why shouldn’t it? You’re creative, receptive, and empathic … not only that, Sweetie, but you treat it with respect. You asked politely for your brush back, and you said thank you when it was returned. You’re no threat to it whatsoever.”

“Then how is Brian?”

“Perhaps because of you.”

Justin gaped over his shoulder at her. “You mean it’s jealous?”

Marilyn was silent for a moment. “No. More … protective of you, I would say. I felt wariness towards Brian … perhaps even fear.”

They’d reached the first floor: Justin stopped and let Marilyn come up to him. “You don’t think there’s any danger?”

“Justin, I can’t promise you that. But in my professional opinion, no.”

“So what do I do?”

Marilyn shrugged. “That’s up to you. If you’re happy to share your space with someone who’s passed over, good for you. If not … well, I’m sure there are other studios in Pittsburgh.”

“But what if it wants something? What if it needs to be set free somehow?”

“Then I’m sure it will find a way of letting you know what to do.” 

Justin led her to the front door, fishing for his wallet. “We said a hundred, didn’t we?”

“Sweetie, let’s just call it a favour from a friend.” Marilyn inclined her head to kiss Justin’s cheek. “Thank you for a most stimulating evening. If anything else happens … well, you know where to find me.”

Justin opened the door and watched her teeter down the steps and across the sidewalk to the safety of her car before hurrying back up to the studio. On the second landing he met Michael and Ben, carrying two chairs apiece. “Thanks for coming over, guys,” he said.

“If our chairs end up possessed, it’ll be your fault!” Michael panted as he started down the next flight.

“Uh … thanks, Justin,” Ben said, juggling the chairs he was carrying into one hand so that he could give Justin an awkward hug. “It was … fascinating. I left the notes I took on Emmett’s table, if you want to take a look at them. Let me know how things turn out.”

“Yeah, I’m sure Ma can recommend a good priest!” Michael called up the stairwell, and Ben offered an apologetic smile before hurrying after him.

Back in the studio he found Brian sprawled on the futon, scowling as he gingerly fingered his damaged nose. Emmett and Ted were watching him silently. They turned as Justin came in.

“Is it okay if I leave the table here until tomorrow?” Emmett asked. “I’m going home with Teddy.” He looked round the studio and shivered. “Somehow I don’t think I want to be alone tonight.”

“That’s fine, Em,” Justin replied. “I’m going to call a cab, then we’ll be out of here too.”

“I can drop you back at the Loft, it’s no problem,” Ted offered.

“Fuck that, I’m staying here,” Brian said, folding his arms, a mulish expression on his face. “Fucked if I’m being chased out by a fucking ghost! One I don’t even fucking believe in anyway!” he added loudly, glaring belligerently around the studio as if daring anything to contradict him.

Justin sighed. He knew better than to argue. “I guess the answer is no, Ted; thank you anyway.”

He shepherded them to the door and locked it behind them. He didn’t like the thought of leaving the table set up, so he gathered the cards and binned them, and left the glass in the sink before fetching blankets from the wall closet. He held out a hand to Brian and pulled him to his feet so that he could extend the futon, then helped Brian out of his jacket, boots and jeans and got him to lie down, still mumbling wrathfully to himself. Justin covered him with the blankets and then, mindful of the last disaster, folded Brian’s clothes and placed them safely on the trestle table before quickly undressing himself, killing the lights and diving under the blankets. Brian’s arms went round him, and Justin found himself engulfed in the familiar warm scent of bourbon, Marlboros, and spicy cologne.

“You sure about this?” Justin asked. “Remember what happened last time.”

“Huh!” Brian snorted. “Don’t believe in fucking ghosts!”

There was silence for a while.

“Fucking Beautiful Sunshine,” Brian muttered scathingly. “Fucking ghost can fuck off!” He pulled Justin closer against him. 

Justin smiled. “I ain’t afraid of no ghosts,” he whispered.

 

TBC

 

 

 

CHAPTER EIGHT

 

Brian woke with a thumping headache and strange music echoing in his ears.

Miss Otis regrets she’s unable to lunch today, Madam,  
Miss Otis regrets she’s unable to lunch today …

Fucking neighbours. What kind of shit was that to be playing in the middle of the night when he was suffering from a mother-fucking bitch of a hangover? He groaned and rolled onto his side, reaching automatically for Justin, but the space next to him was cold and empty. He lifted his head, blinking as he tried to focus his gritty eyes, and saw unpolished floorboards surrounding him and moonlight flooding through long windows. He felt horrible, itchy blankets against his skin instead of sheer cotton and realised bemusedly he wasn’t in his bed. Or his Loft. 

He seemed to be in Justin’s studio. It took a few moments for his memory to kick in: getting shit-faced at Babylon; scaring the bejesus out of Mikey and Emmett; the séance; fucking Mysterious Marilyn and her Magical Flying Shot Glass. He reached up to his nose and winced. Nope. Not a nightmare. So where the fuck was Justin?

He pushed himself up on his elbows, shivering at the shock of icy air on his skin, barely noticing the fact that the weird song was still playing. He scanned the studio for Justin’s figure but the place appeared to be empty: for a moment he wondered if the kid had left his drunken ass and gone back to the Loft alone, but he could see Justin’s cargoes and trainers on the floor beside the futon, so perhaps he’d just gone to take a piss.

Then he heard a faint noise coming from the distant corner of the room where the old sink stood, and peered in that direction. The moonbeams didn’t reach that far, but eventually he made out the pale curve of Justin’s naked back in the shadows: he was on his knees, seemingly searching the floor for something.

Half relieved and half irritated, Brian staggered to his feet and made his way groggily over. “What the fuck are you looking for?” he demanded.

Justin made no acknowledgement whatsoever of his presence. Frowning, Brian looked down to see what he was doing: Justin had a palette knife gripped in his right hand and appeared to be trying to prise up one of the floorboards, but the thin blade was too pliable to be an effective lever. Justin didn’t seem to be aware of that fairly self-evident fact: he kept working the knife until it snapped under the pressure, and even then he didn’t stop trying to use it.

Brian felt a chill that was nothing to do with the temperature of the room. There was something eerie in the way Justin continued blindly moving, and Brian reached down hurriedly to shake his shoulder. “Justin … Justin, answer me, dammit. What are you trying to do?”

He touched ice-cold, clammy flesh, and as Justin’s head swung slowly round to face him Brian couldn’t stop himself taking a step backwards. His first crazy thought was that this wasn’t Justin at all: his blank eyes seemed to be almost sightless – they certainly held no recognition, and Justin had never looked at him like that no matter how bad things had been between them.

“You left me,” Justin said accusingly; and Christ, he must be still fucked up from whatever shit he’d taken earlier because Brian could see Justin’s lips moving but the sound seemed to be slightly out of sync, like a badly dubbed movie. “You left me for her … and a kid!”

I’m dreaming, Brian thought. Or hallucinating … induced by too many chemicals and nasal trauma. But he could feel the rough wooden floor beneath his naked feet, and the prickling of gooseflesh crawling over his skin, and he could still hear that fucking song playing in the distance …and hadn’t Justin said something about a song he kept hearing, an old scratchy song like this one? Brian would never admit to himself how close he was to actually bolting at that point, before his rational mind managed to start functioning and take control, and he felt a flood of relief as he realised what must be going on. 

Sleepwalking. That had to be the answer, although to his knowledge Justin had never done it before. Brian knew that people in that state could perform everyday tasks and even hold conversations without ever awakening, so it would certainly account for Justin’s bizarre behaviour, his repetitive movements, and his weird air of disconnection. It presumably accounted for the crazy shit he was spouting about Lindsay and Gus, too.

He said softly, “I didn’t leave you for them, Sunshine. They’re in Canada, remember?”

Justin didn’t seem to hear. “You killed me,” he whispered, his face still blank and expressionless but his voice so filled with pathos that Brian could hardly bear to listen to him. To his dismay he saw tears trickling down Justin’s cheeks. “You killed me. How could you have done that?”

Brian felt his words like a kick in the gut. He knew better than anybody just how badly he’d hurt Justin during those first years, when the kid had been so trusting, so innocent; so fucking young. Brian had his own collection of scars to prove that wounds inflicted during that formative period between childhood and adulthood never completely heal, and he was uncomfortably certain that neither Craig’s venom nor Hobbs’ bat had ever inflicted so much agony to Justin’s tender heart as Hotlanta, the Zucchini man, the Birthday Hustler or Rage had. Not to mention all those weeks Justin spent lying in hospital, crippled and alone, waiting for a visit that never came. 

Yet Justin had forgiven him, as he’d forgiven Justin: for the broken rules, for Ian, for Hollywood. For turning his back on the most honest offer Brian had ever made in his life. And somehow they’d ended up here: knowing each other’s faults and accepting them … stronger because of it. Or so Brian had thought.

The room was utterly still; at least the asshole with the gramophone had finally turned off that fucking song. Brian became aware of just how cold it was: he could see his breath fogging in the freezing air: Justin, dressed only in his shorts, was shivering violently, his arms covered with goosebumps.

Brian tried to recall everything he knew about somnambulism. He knew that in movies people always woke the sleeper up, but Brian was sure he’d heard that wasn’t a good idea; that it was much better to let them wake normally. So he reached down his hand and suggested mildly: “You’re freezing, Justin. Why don’t you come back to bed where it’s warmer?”

To his infinite relief Justin made no protest: he dropped the palette knife, slowly took Brian’s hand and let Brian help him up before docilely following him back to the futon. Brian wrapped the blankets around them and hugged Justin close, twining their legs together and trying to heat the kid’s chilled body, although his own was hardly any warmer.

It was time he took this situation in hand. He hadn’t taken it seriously at first: after all, Justin could be a tad absent-minded, especially when he was working on a new project, so it was hardly surprising that he’d mislaid a few things now and again. But now it appeared that he was suffering from episodes of actual memory loss, as Justin had himself suggested, and it seemed likely to Brian that the somnambulism he had witnessed was the cause. Justin had been functioning and to some extent responding, but Brian would like to bet that he’d have no memory of his actions in the morning. It was the spin Justin was putting on what was happening that was the real concern, this haunted house shit - and he was so going to kick Mikey’s and Emmett’s asses for encouraging him with that fucked-up séance – when he should be addressing what was obviously a medical condition. Not only that, but Justin’s sleep-talking had disclosed an attitude to Lindsay and Gus that Brian hadn’t suspected, because Brian had never heard the kid refer to either of them with other than warmth and affection. Yet there had been no disguising the contempt in his voice tonight, nor the delusion apparently lurking in his subconscious that Brian had somehow chosen them over him.

Brian didn’t know whether the problem was psychological or physical: whether this was just the latest effect of the PTSD Justin had suffered from, or a lesion or a - God-forbid - tumour caused by the bashing: but whatever it was, Brian was going to find out, because what if the kid had another episode and walked under a truck or fell down all those flights of stairs because he didn’t know what the fuck he was doing? And he wasn’t going to take any bullshit about it being Justin’s business, because Justin wasn’t thinking clearly at the moment. 

Tomorrow he’d talk to the kid, and they’d make an appointment to see a doctor … a real one, whether Justin liked it or not.

 

TBC

 

 

CHAPTER NINE

 

“I did what?” Justin asked, one sock half-on as he goggled at Brian.

“Sleepwalking. It was fucking freaky.” Brian stooped to pull up his jeans. “I woke up and found you scrabbling about on the floor over there. I asked you what was going on and you started babbling about how I’d left you for Lindsay and Gus and how it had killed you.” Brian threw him a quick glance. “You were pretty upset, actually."

Justin laughed and continued dressing. “You sure you didn’t dream it? You were pretty wasted last night.”

“Nope. I have frostbite and splinters to prove it.”

“But why would I say something like that? It doesn’t make sense.”

Brian thrust his feet into his boots and zipped them. “Because, as I told you, you were sleepwalking.”

Justin shook his head disbelievingly. “Brian, I’ve never done that in my life! Why would I start now?”

Brian grabbed his wrist and tugged him over to the sink in the corner. “What’s that, then?” He indicated an object lying beneath it.

Justin stared at the remains of his palette knife, about an inch of snapped blade protruding from the handle. “How the fuck did that happen?”

“You seemed to be trying to lift a floorboard.” Brian pointed to the rest of the blade sticking out of the floor. 

Justin dropped to his knees and tried to tug the piece of metal free, but it was wedged tightly between two boards and he couldn’t budge it. He looked up at Brian, confused and a little scared. “Why would I be trying to lift a floorboard?”

“Same answer as last time,” Brian replied. “You were sleepwalking. Maybe you were trying to fix the plumbing, whatever-the–fuck. I’m sure it made sense to you at the time.”

Justin studied the area under the sink. It was difficult to see because of the hundred-year’s worth of grime and dust ground into the joints, but it looked to Justin as though the board directly beneath the sink had been cut through about a foot away from the wall. It was beside this piece of board that his knife blade was wedged. He felt a sudden thrill of excitement.

“Brian, I think this section can be lifted up. I want to see what’s under it.”

Brian rolled his eyes. “I’ll tell you what’s under it, Sunshine: water pipes.”

“No, it’s the ghost!” Justin sat up eagerly. “Don’t you see? I asked Marilyn, what if it needed me to help it somehow? And she said if it did it would find a way to show me! Well, it has! It wants me to find something, Brian!”

“Justin…” Brian shook his head and then crouched down beside him. He took Justin’s hands in his own, his eyes dark with concern. “You’ve got to stop this. It wasn’t any burglar, it wasn’t any ghost, it was you … sleepwalking. And we’ve got to find out what’s wrong, because you’re scaring the shit out of me at the moment.” 

Justin stared at him. “But what about the séance last night? The way that glass was moving … nobody was pushing it, Brian!”

“Not on purpose, no. But I’m sure Ben has an explanation for how subconscious thought translates into unconscious movement.”

“Oh, what, like his very convincing theory of how it ‘accidentally’ flipped up and hit you?” Justin asked sarcastically. “Look in the mirror when you get home and see how much of an accident it was!” 

“It’s more convincing than the idea of some ghost who thinks it’s a fish doing it!” Brian snapped. “Justin, Ouija board messages are 90% meaningless gibberish, you know that. Now please, concentrate on what’s important here. Something’s going on in your head: maybe it’s just psychological, but whatever it is we have to fix it before you end up hurting yourself.”

“How?”

“Think about it! You’ve obviously been zoning out during the day as well as at night. That’s why you don’t remember doing things; why you think things have been moved around. What if it happens when you’re out? Or if you wander off outside anyway? What if I hadn’t been here last night? You didn’t know what the fuck was going on. You could have ended up freezing to death, wandering the streets in nothing but your fucking tighty-whities! And what if it’s something more serious … what if there’s a bleed in your head or something? We need to get you checked out, Justin.”

“It’s nothing like that!” Justin protested. He understood Brian’s concern, and his attempts to do something about it, but he couldn’t see why Brian was denying what to Justin seemed so obvious. “I hardly ever get headaches any more; my vision’s fine, I don’t feel nauseous … even my hand’s improving.” He gazed at Brian imploringly. “It’s not me!”

“Well, it’s not a fucking ghost!” Brian shouted, standing up and waving his arms in frustration. He took a deep breath, obviously making an effort to keep calm. “Look, you even thought about it yourself, didn’t you? You said if the séance didn’t work you’d go to a doctor …”

“The séance did fucking work, Brian!” Justin yelled back. “Michael, Emmett, Marilyn, Ted and me. We all saw what happened. How come we’re all wrong and you’re the only one who’s right?”

Brian barked a laugh. “Because they’re all idiots and you’re not exactly a reliable witness at the moment?”

“Fine. Fucking fine.” Justin climbed to his feet and glared angrily at Brian. “You don’t want to believe the evidence of your own eyes, that’s your problem. I’ll go back to the Loft with you and get a crowbar. Then I’ll come back and get that board up.”

“Oh, no you won’t,” Brian replied, striding across the room to pick up his jacket and jerking it on. “You’re going to call your neurologist and make the earliest possible appointment. If you don’t, I will.” He stamped over to the door and turned the latch.

Justin grabbed his own coat and followed. “Excuse me, but what makes you think you have the right to order me to do anything?” He pulled the door shut behind him and locked it again. “I’m not your son, or your wife, or even your goddamn poodle, and even if I were you still couldn’t make me!”

“I wouldn’t be too sure about that, Sunshine,” Brian warned, already half-way down the hall. Justin cursed and stuffed his key into his pocket before hurrying to catch up. Brian had almost arrived at the stairs with Justin hot on his heels when a huge crash sounded from the studio beyond the wall, heavy enough to make the floor jump and several stray pieces of plaster to lose their battle with gravity. They stared at each other wide-eyed.

A door below flew open and a frightened female voice shouted up the stairs: “What the fuck’s going on up there?”

Justin went and stuck his head over the bannisters, seeing a white face framed with curly blond hair looking back at him. “I don’t know,” he called to her. “I was just leaving … I think something must have fallen over.”

“Jeez, I thought the whole place was coming down,” the girl complained. “Try and keep it quiet, wouldya? I have to work nights.” 

“Yeah, okay. Sorry,” Justin apologised, before turning to Brian open-mouthed. “What the fuck was that?”

“Sounded like maybe part of the ceiling collapsed,” Brian replied, looking just as shaken. “You’d better go check.”

They went back the studio door and Justin unlocked it again; he poked his head in cautiously, half expecting to be met with a cloud of dust and rubble, but the air was clear and undisturbed. Justin pushed the door further open and walked in.

“Brian?” he said. “Perhaps you’d like to find a rational explanation for this?”

He felt Brian’s presence at his shoulder, but Justin’s attention was wholly focussed on what lay in the centre of the studio. It appeared to be the top two drawers from his supply chest, upside down on the floor.

Justin walked over to them. The heavy wooden drawers were perfectly aligned with each other, but they were inverted, with the top drawer lying beneath the second one. It looked just as if someone had taken them out, carried them to the middle of the room, flipped them over and then dropped them.

He shot a glance at Brian, whose jaw muscles were working overtime as he surveyed the scene. “Well? Would you like to tell me how I did this when I was sleepwalking?”

There was silence. “Maybe they weren’t closed properly. Maybe they slid out or something …” Brian’s voice held more than a hint of desperation.

“And, what? They did a 180% back flip and landed right out here? Puh-lease.” He crouched down and carefully lifted the edge of the top drawer and peered under it. “Oh, and look at this … everything’s still inside. Nothing’s fallen out while they were flying through the air, nothing’s broken, not even the bottles … oh my God, Brian, this is … totally amazing!”

Brian crouched down beside him and took a look for himself. “Justin … I honestly don’t know what to say.” He ran a hand through his hair distractedly. “There has to be an explanation, though …”

“There is, and we’re going to find it. First, you’re going to give me a hand to put all this back. Then we’re going to get a crowbar and lift that floorboard.”

 

TBC

 

 

 

CHAPTER TEN

 

“I still think we’re only going to find the plumbing,” Brian grumbled as he dug the claw end of the crowbar into the joint between the floor boards.

“If that’s the case, then I promise I’ll see a doctor,” Justin assured him. “Now would you get the damn thing up, already?”

“Hold your horses, Princess. There isn’t much room for leverage down here.” Brian was on his knees, his shoulders knotting with strain as he leaned his weight on the bar. He grunted with effort, and then the board suddenly lifted up with a protesting screech. Justin dived forward eagerly, almost shoving Brian over in his haste. 

Brian was right: it was the access for the plumbing beneath the sink.

“Sorry, Sunshine,” Brian said.

Justin ignored him, trying to peer beyond the old, cobwebbed pipes into the gap between his floor and the ceiling of the room below. Then he lay flat on his stomach and began to work his right arm into the cavity, searching as far as he could reach. After a few minutes of groping around, the tips of his fingers brushed something … something cold and hard, like metal. It shifted as he touched it, and his heart leapt.

He carefully wriggled his arm free and sat up, brushing the dirt and cobwebs from his hand as he looked at Brian excitedly. “There’s something in there! It feels like a tin box … but it’s just out of my reach. Can you try? Your arm’s longer …” 

Brian gave a martyred sigh. With exaggerated care he unbuttoned his shirt and took it off before stretching out on the floor beside Justin and inserting his arm beneath the floorboards. Justin watched as he huffed and grunted, and then asked eagerly, “Well? Can you feel it?”

“I can feel something. Probably one of the builders’ lunch boxes.”

“Can you get it out? What if you use the crowbar?”

“Just … shut the fuck up a minute, will you? I’ve … nearly got it …” Brian scrabbled his feet, trying to gain purchase for an extra inch of reach. He bit his lip in concentration, and Justin saw his shoulder muscles working beneath his smooth, tanned skin. Suddenly Brian pulled out his arm, sat up and flexed his fingers and then reached down again. He re-emerged clutching a tin box about the size of a tea caddie.

“Oh my God, you got it!” Justin snatched the tin out of Brian’s hand. It had obviously been under the floor for a long time; it was filthy and pitted with rust, but Justin could still make out the image emblazoned on the lid of a man in a top hat smoking a fat cigar. He hurried over to the table with it, and started struggling to get the lid off.

“That’s quite alright, Sunshine; any time you want me to dislocate my other shoulder, just let me know,” Brian said, coming up behind him.

“I can’t get it open!” Justin told him. He felt like stomping his foot in frustration.

Brian took the tin and studied it. “It’s all rusted round the edges. And these hinges at the back, see? It needs some oil.”

“Oil! Of course!” Justin sped over to his supply chest and took the bottle of linseed from the bottom drawer. He grabbed a rag and poured a little of the oil on it and then headed back to the table. Holding the tin steady with his left hand he began to work the oil painstaking around the rim of the lid, paying extra attention to the hinges.

“Well. I’ll just go and clean myself up, then.” Brian wandered disconsolately over to the sink and began to wash the grime from his hands and arms.

Justin went to get a Sharpie and began to carefully scrape away at the rust around the lid, working the tip of the fine blade beneath it to try and gently prise it free. Then he set the blade down, gripped the tin tightly in his left hand and tried to open it again.

To his joy he felt a little movement beneath his fingers: he applied more pressure and then, with a shrill squeak of parting metal, the lid lifted.

Inside was a small bundle of what looked like letters held together with a red ribbon. Justin lifted them out carefully: they were stained and musty but seemed otherwise intact; he resisted the urge to read them immediately and laid them on the table. There were only two other items left inside: an envelope and a small object wrapped in tissue paper. He picked up the paper: the contents were light and soft beneath his fingers so he placed it on his palm to gently unwrap it, and then gasped with surprise and delight. It was a fish about two inches long, made of stuffed material with a thin red cord attached to its back so that it could be suspended. It was obviously oriental and seemed to be a representation of a Japanese Fighting Fish, its long fins and tail formed by hanging silken plaits, its entire body exquisitely embroidered with scarlet and gold thread. Justin picked it up and as it revolved slowly the silk glistened in the sunlight, and he marvelled that the colours should still be so brilliant and vibrant. He laid it reverently back on its tissue and placed it beside the letters. 

Eagerly he lifted out the envelope and looked at it. It was addressed to Mr. Jesse Fisher, 25 Dial Square and it held a single faded black-and-white photograph of two young men seated in the back of an ancient, open-topped car. There seemed to be a black chauffeur in the driving seat, although he was only partly in shot: all Justin could see of him was half his face and one uniformed arm. It had obviously been taken in the summer because the two men in the back seat were wearing crisp white shirts with open collars, with snazzy white straw boaters perched jauntily on their heads. One of them, the slighter, younger looking one, was gazing at his companion with an adoring smile which Justin understood only too well. The other, the man sitting with one arm slung casually around his friend’s shoulders, the one gazing confidently out at the camera with an arrogant smirk on his handsome face … well, he was Justin’s Mystery Man, complete with small, dark Hitler moustache.

“Brian …” Justin said faintly.

“Yeah. I can see, Sunshine.” Brian was at his elbow, buttoning his shirt and looking at the photo in Justin’s hand.

“It is him, isn’t it?”

“You know it is.”

“And look at this,” Justin pointed to the fish lying like a brilliant jewel on the table. “And this name … Jesse Fisher.”

“So it wasn’t gibberish,” Brian said.

Justin looked up at him. “So you believe now? Really, truly believe?”

Brian gestured helplessly. “I wish I didn’t, Sunshine. I wish I could think up a plausible, rational explanation for why you painted the man in this photograph. But even supposing for some reason you’d put that photo in that tin and hidden it yourself, the lid was rusted shut and those boards haven’t been disturbed for more years than you’ve been alive. So I guess I don’t really have a choice.” He put his arm around Justin’s shoulders and pressed a kiss to his hair. “But for what it’s worth, I’m ecstatic that your little blond head is actually functioning as normally as it can.”

Justin accidentally trod on his toe. 

“And at least you have a name for your model,” Brian said, after he’d hopped around cursing for a while.

“Oh, he’s not Fish,” Justin replied confidently. “Marilyn said the Mystery Man wasn’t the ghost, and I agree. I think this is Fish.” He gently touched the profile of the other young man in the photograph, and smiled.

 

TBC

 

 

 

CHAPTER ELEVEN

 

“Newlands,

June 28th 1935,” Justin read aloud. 

“My Dear Fish,

A whole bunch of us are going to Hauto for the holiday weekend, so I hope I can count on you to be there. You already know most of the gang – Jack and Fred Marriott, Billy Sullivan and the Tracey girls are all coming, so it should be pretty lively. Connie’s going to borrow her brother’s Dodge and can give you a lift - there’ll be plenty of room to stow all your gear. You’re always saying how much you’d love to paint the lake, so no excuses! 

I’ll expect you Thursday,

Regards,

M

P.S. Don’t forget your bathing trunks!”

“How very Scott-Fitzgerald,” Brian remarked dryly, sitting next to Justin on the futon with one long leg hooked over the other, sipping a beer from Justin’s icebox.

“Fish was an artist, too,” Justin said, looking over at him. 

“Yes, you seem to have a lot in common, including a pathetic nick-name. Do you think this M is the other guy in the photo?”

Justin shrugged. “I guess so, otherwise why keep it with the letters?” He glanced at the next sheet of paper, covered in the same bold, masculine hand. “This one’s signed M, too.” He checked the others. “They all are.”

“Let’s hear the next instalment, then.”

“Newlands,

August 14th, 1935

My Dear Little Fish,

Great news! Ma’s mooching off to Boston for a week – Maggie’s about to drop the sprog, so of course Aunt Julia’s all of a flutter and needs Ma to hold her hand. She’s dragging Pa along so I’m free! FREE! I’ll pick you up Friday and we’ll go to the lake: just you, me, and a few magnums of Dom Perignon! You’d laugh if you heard how pleased Pa is with my sudden passion for fishing – I blame it all on you, of course. He says it’s refreshing to know that at last one of my friends is mature enough to have a hobby other than dancing and drinking.

I’d love to see his face if he knew you were a three letter man!

He’s taking the Rolls so I’ll have to drive us up in the Austin, but that shouldn’t be a problem because I don’t mean to leave you any time for painting. I’m sure we’ve got room for the Victrola, though, so if you’ve got any new platters I haven’t heard…” Justin frowned. “Records, I guess he means … bring them along. Otherwise you won’t need anything, not even your trunks – we can just skinny-dip.

When we’re not Fishing, of course!

In anticipation,

M.”

“Wow, things are heating up nicely,” Brian smirked. “Never heard it called that before. But what the fuck’s a three letter man?”

“No idea. BBF maybe? Any way, it sounds idyllic,” Justin said a little wistfully. “Do you suppose they bothered with condoms back then?”

Brian shrugged. “Well, they wouldn’t have had to worry about AIDs, although I think syphilis and gonorrhoea were pretty rife.”

“This one’s different,” Justin said, scanning the next letter. “Different paper … oh, it’s from Boston!

Boston,

September10th, 1935. 4.30 p.m.

Dear Fishy, 

Who would have thought Boston could be such a drag? You have no idea how lucky you are, not having any family expectations to live up to – I’ve had to spend the last week acting the dutiful, proud Godfather to the ugliest, smelliest, noisiest little sprog I’ve ever had the misfortune to meet. God knows why they decided to bestow the honour on me – I have no interest in genealogy but apparently she’s only my first cousin once removed - but I suppose they wanted to make Ma happy. The idea of being a father appals me – the only solace is that, once Sarah does produce, the brat will be so surrounded by besotted women they might forget I’m there. Still, let’s not dwell on the horrors of the future. 

The weather’s foul, so we can’t go anywhere; I managed to escape to a hop last night, but it was full of dreary Janes making gooey eyes at boring Joes. Of course I’m off-limits, so they left me alone, which only goes to prove that Ma’s right and every cloud does have a silver lining, I guess.

I’ll be back at Newlands by next weekend, so I’ll let you know when I can come over. I warn you, I’ll be crawling up the walls by then …

Yours,

M.” 

“Poor bastard,” Brian said feelingly.

“It gets worse,” Justin replied. “Listen:

Newlands 

December 21, 1935

Fish,

I know this is hard for you. Don’t think it isn’t just as bad for me. But you knew from the beginning how things stood: Sarah and I are marrying in the spring, and that’s all there is to it. Pa’s in over his head and Sarah’s father is going to cover his debts as part of the settlement, so there’s no way out of it. As his only son it’s my duty to make this marriage work and carry on the family name. But even if I weren’t engaged to her, you know there is no way I could publically acknowledge you - every man in Pittsburgh would cut us dead, and my family would disown me. I’m not prepared to live as an outcast, even if you are. Yes, I know you’d be happy living on your art in a stinking Parisian garret, but I’m not you; I like the way I live, and I don’t mean to lose it. 

What you must understand is that my marriage doesn’t have to change things between us, unless you want it to - we’ll have to be a little more discreet for a while, perhaps, but that’s all. Things should get easier once I’ve knocked her up.

With regard to the holidays - I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to disappoint you. I have to spend Christmas with the Parents, and New Year with Sarah’s family, so I’ve enclosed your gift – it’s not much, I’m afraid, but I thought it was appropriate. I’ll try to come over after I get home and we’ll talk then. 

Regards,

M. So much for ‘idyllic’!” Justin snorted. “He wanted Fish to be his dirty little secret while he carried on his respectable breeder life to keep his family happy!”

“Be fair, Sunshine,” Brian said softly. “Pittsburgh – outside Liberty Avenue – isn’t exactly gay-friendly even now, is it? God knows what it was like in the Thirties. And it wouldn’t just have been him to suffer if he came out … his family would, too. And it sounds as if his old man was already in deep shit.”

“I know that! But just imagine what it would be like, Brian: having to watch the man you love making out with his beard, pretending he loved her while all he wanted was a fucking brood mare. And then watching their children grow up, and knowing that you’ll never be allowed to be part of their family, never till the day you die! Just a stolen hour here, or a day there, but never any time when it mattered – never any time you needed him!” Justin felt an instant empathy for Fish, and couldn’t help but sympathise with his position – the new boy in a group of established friends, deeply in love with a man who wasn’t prepared, or able, to make a commitment to him. It seemed to Justin that he could easily have been Fish, in another life and another time, if he hadn’t had Brian. 

“It’s been like that for gay people all through history,” Brian replied. “Things hadn’t changed much even when Vic came out.”

“I’d never be able to live like that,” Justin declared, remembering how Ethan had proposed much the same sort of arrangement. 

Brian laid a hand on his thigh. “Not everyone has your kind of courage, Justin. Most people need other people … and that means keeping society’s approval.”

“You thought it was me last night talking about Lindsay and Gus, but it was Fish talking about how his lover chose a woman and the possibility of an heir over him,” Justin said sadly. “He never even got Christmas.” He cocked his head. “I wonder if the fish in the tin was his present.” He picked up the last letter. 

“March 9th, 1936

Fish,

I hope you were only kidding about what you said. You know that can never be an option. I can’t emphasise strongly enough that you can’t involve Sarah in this; she has no suspicions at all and that is the way I intend to keep it. Why can’t you understand this, Fish? Are you dumb, or something? 

After the scene at the club, I think it might be a good idea for you to keep out of sight for a while. I told Pa you were having some problems and needed some peace and quiet, so he was quite happy to offer the lake house for a few weeks. The family doesn’t use it at this time of year, anyway. I’ll settle things with Eloise and make sure that she doesn’t let the studio while you’re gone. Maybe you’ll finally be able to get some painting done.

I think some time alone will be good for you; it might give you a little more perspective on the situation, and the consequences we’ll both have to face if you don’t keep your lip buttoned. I don’t have a lot of free time at the moment what with the wedding being so close, but I’ll come when I can and you can tell me what you’ve decided.

I’ll send Chalmers…” Justin gasped and looked up at Brian in surprise. “That’s Daph’s name!”

Brian raised his eyebrows. “I wouldn’t have thought it was exactly common, either.” 

“…to pick you up so be sure to pack everything you need,” Justin continued. “Please don’t fight me on this, Fish. Don’t try to force me to make a choice when there isn’t one.

You don’t want to make me angry with you, Fish.

M”

Justin blinked. “That sounds like a threat to me. Fish was obviously talking about outing him to his fiancée.”

“Probably not the best solution he could have come up with, judging from the reaction.” Brian picked up the photograph and studied it. “Since he talks about ‘sending’ Chalmers to pick Fish up, I’d take a bet that Chalmers is the chauffeur.” He tapped the uniformed black man in the driving seat of the car. “This whole thing is one shit-load of coincidences, Sunshine.”

Justin had a sudden idea. “Where are those notes Ben took?” He spotted the notebook still lying on Emmett’s table and went to pick it up. He studied it for a moment, and then gave a cry of triumph. “Brian … look! This part Michael thought was gibberish … it’s not! It says, Ask Chalmers!” His eyes widened as another thought struck him. “What I said … or Fish said … last night, after the bit about how you left me … wasn’t there something about how it killed me?”

“Your precise words were, ‘you killed me’, and then you asked how I could have done that.”

Justin’s mouth hung open. “I said ‘you killed me’?” he squeaked.

“Yeah, but I didn’t take it literally. I just assumed you meant that I’d hurt you badly. In the past,” Brian said.

“But he did mean it literally! It wasn’t me talking to you, was it? It was Fish talking to his lover! You killed me, he said. His lover … this guy I painted … he killed Fish because he was going to tell his fiancée that her husband-to-be was gay!”

Brian ran a hand through his hair. “That’s a big assumption, Sunshine.”

“Not really.” Justin began to pace up and down animatedly. “Mystery Man obviously came from a wealthy family, but his father owed a lot of money. So he arranged for Mystery Man to marry some rich guy’s daughter so that they could bail him out. Except Mystery Man is gay, and he’s fucking Fish on a regular basis. When Fish gets too attached and starts threatening to ruin everything by outing him, Mystery Man kills him rather than be exposed! After all, he can’t have come back here, or the tin wouldn’t still have been hidden!”

Brian wrinkled his nose. “Perhaps he just left Pittsburgh and kept going.”

“Then why is he haunting this studio?” Justin demanded.

“I don’t know, Sunshine.”

“Well, I’m going to find out. I’m going to call Daph and find out if she had any relatives who were in service.”

 

TBC

 

 

 

CHAPTER TWELVE

 

“Hi, Gramps!” Daphne cried, bouncing over to the old man sitting in the armchair beside the window and bending down to kiss his cheek. “This is my friend Justin … the one I told you about.”

Daphne’s great-grandfather looked up at Justin and chuckled. “She’s been telling me about you since she was six years old, so I feel I know you very well, son. Forgive me if I don’t get up, my legs aren’t what they used to be.” He extended a large, bony hand, which Justin shook carefully.

“Pleased to meet you, sir.”

“Make it ‘Earl’ and I’ll call you Justin. Deal?”

“Deal,” Justin smiled, liking the old man already. He looked nothing like Daphne: he was tall and skinny, with skin of wrinkled ebony and a fluffy fringe of white hair like a halo, but Justin recognised the same irreverence and joie de vivre that had first attracted him to his best friend. “And this is Brian.”

“I’ve also heard a heap about you,” Earl said, shaking with Brian too.

“All bad, I hope.”

Earl threw back his head and laughed. “Son, when you’ve lived nearly a hundred years you’ve seen and heard it all. You ain’t such a bad boy.” He indicated the couch. “Sit, sit. Can I offer you youngsters anything? Coffee? Beer?”

“Now, Gramps, you know you’re not supposed to drink alcohol,” Daphne chided. “The doctor said …”

“I don’t give a diddly-shit what that quack says,” Earl huffed, making Brian snort with laughter. “Besides, I have visitors, girl! I have to have something to offer them!”

“A beer would be fine,” Justin said. 

“You run along and get four beers out of the ice box,” Earl told Daphne. He turned to Justin. “She’s a good girl, little Daphne – only she tends to get a mite bossy, like most women. Now, she says you have some questions for me.”

“Yes, if you don’t mind.” Justin fished his wallet out of his pocket and carefully extracted the photograph. “Is this you?” he asked, leaning forward and holding it out. 

Earl squinted at it as Daphne re-appeared and handed out bottles of Budd. She perched herself on the arm of Earl’s chair as he picked up a pair of reading glasses from the table beside him and settled them on his nose. Then he peered at the photograph again. “Oh, my,” he said softly. “Oh, my, my.” He nodded, smiling widely. “Yeah, that’s me. See this car? That’s a 1908 Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost. Sweetest car I ever drove. And Mister Max there … and poor little Jesse. Well, well. How on earth did you come by this, son?”

“It’s a long story,” Justin hedged. “Excuse me, but you said this guy’s name was Max?”

“Maxwell Clifford the Third, only child of Maxwell Clifford the Second,” Earl told him. “Old money … they had a big house called Newlands in Allegheny. My Daddy was chauffeur to Old Man Clifford, and he taught me to drive almost before I could walk. When he had a stroke in ’34, Mr. Max talked his father into giving me the job … we were pretty much the same age, and I’d grown up around the house. My Mammy was one of the housemaids.” 

“And this one … Jesse?” Justin probed. “You remember him?”

Earl winked. “I might be old, but there ain’t nothing wrong with my memory, as long as it ain’t last week you’re asking me about! Sure I remember Jesse … he was one of Mr. Max’s friends. Jesse Fisher … they all called him ‘Fish’. Nice boy. He wanted to be an artist … always drawing things, wherever he went.”

“I know the type,” Brian smiled.

“Of course, you’re an artist too, ain’t you? Daphne showed me a sketch you drew of her. You’re a very talented young man.”

“Thank you,” Justin said. “But Fish … I mean, Jesse … what happened to him?” 

“Why, he shot himself, up at the family’s summer house in the Poconos. Dreadful thing, him being so young and all. It was quite a scandal, for a while.” 

“Shot himself?” Justin repeated stupidly. He really hadn’t expected that answer.

Earl studied him gravely. “It was a long time ago; mid ‘30’s, I’d say. A few years before the war. Was he a relative or something?”

“N .. no,” Justin stammered.

“Justin thinks he’s haunting his studio,” Daphne explained.

The old man raised his thick white eyebrows. “Which studio is this?”

“Um … it’s in Dial Square,” Justin replied.

Earl stared at him for a moment. “The house on the corner?”

“Yes. Number 25 … do you know it?”

“That was where Jesse used to live. The top floor.”

“I know. We found an old tin hidden under the floorboards. That photograph was in it, in an envelope addressed to Jesse Fisher.”

“Under the floorboards? You renovating that old place, son?”

“No … Jesse showed us where to look.”

Earl looked sceptical. “He did, huh?”

“I know how it sounds, but it’s true.” Justin ran a hand through his hair. “Let me try to explain. There have been strange things going on ever since I rented the place - things being moved, or disappearing; cold draughts, weird noises, all that stuff … even Daph felt something, and she’s not the only one.” 

“And he so didn’t believe me!” Daphne said, tossing her head.

“No, I didn’t,” Justin admitted. “But then I found myself painting this man’s face … this guy I’d never seen before.” He nodded at the photo. “Him. Max. Well, one thing led to another and I decided to try a séance … the name ‘Fish’ came up, and ‘Chalmers’, although I didn’t realise it at the time. Then that night it was like … like Fish possessed me or something.”

“I woke up to find him trying to get up one of the floorboards,” Brian confirmed. “I thought he was sleep-walking at first, but then … well, I realised something else was going on. So we lifted up the board, and like Justin said, there was this tin.”

“There were letters in it too, from someone who signed himself ‘M’,” Justin continued. “They mentioned a house near a lake, and talked about ‘Chalmers’ as though he was a driver of some kind. So we thought he might be the chauffeur in the photo, and since Daph is the only Chalmers I know, I figured I may as well ask if any of the men in her family worked as a chauffeur in the 1930’s. And she told me about you.” Justin turned to Brian. “Can I have the letters?” Brian put his beer down on the coffee table before taking the bundle out of the inner pocket of his jacket and passing them to him. Justin laid them on Earl’s knee. “It’s probably easier if you just read them yourself.”

Earl read each letter in turn while Daphne craned over his shoulder. Her eyes got wider with each revelation until she was squirming with excitement. “Omigod! This is so … tragic! So Max abandoned him and he killed himself! No wonder he’s restless! But why would he haunt his old studio and not the place where he died?”

Earl shook his head. “It’s not there anymore. Old Man Clifford had it pulled down after what happened. It was up on Lake Hauto … beautiful place; the family used to go there every summer and fall. Good fishing up there.” He mused for a while, seemingly lost in thought.

“Do you know what he meant by ‘a three letter man?’” Brian asked.

“It meant fag, son. F-A-G. So I guess they both were, after all.” He took of his glasses and replaced them on the table at his elbow, wearily wiped at his eyes with his thumb and blinked a few times. Then he began to talk. 

“You have to understand things were very different then. Blacks might be equal under the constitution, but that didn’t mean we was welcome. And the Depression; well, it hit us harder than most. Those of us who had steady work was grateful. And working for an old family like the Cliffords ….we figured we was lucky, because there was a lot of folks with no food to eat, and no roof over their heads. And he wasn’t such a bad master, the Old Man. He was hard, but he was fair; and so was his son. Not that Mr. Max didn’t have a temper: I seen him take a horsewhip to a boy who sassed him, many times.” He took a long, slow pull at his beer, and Justin watched his Adam’s apple bobbing in his sinewy throat. “Folks had a sense of loyalty then,” he went on. “Family business stayed in the family; you didn’t gossip about what you saw or heard, not like now. So don’t go getting the idea that I have a lot of dirt to dish, because I don’t.”

He gestured at the letters. “This doesn’t surprise me. I often wondered about Mr. Max, even before Jesse came along. He had a lot of friends - girls as well as boys - and I was always running them to parties or dances or picnics in the country. Prohibition had ended in ’33, and the young folks were making the most of it. I noticed he’d usually have a favourite who’d be around for a while and then disappear; a few months later, there’d be another. Never one of the girls … but then he was engaged to Sarah Munro, so that wasn’t surprising. Her grandfather had made his fortune in lumber, but the family were Johnny-come-lately’s as far as old Pittsburgh was concerned. They were only too happy to marry their daughter into one of the oldest families, even though Old Man Clifford had lost most of his investments in the ‘29 Crash. Whereas the Munros were all set to benefit from the building programmes the government was introducing to kick-start the economy with. Everybody thought it was a great match for both families.”

“How did Jesse and Max meet?” Daphne asked.

“At the house in Dial Square,” Earl answered. “The owner was a lady called Eloise Sinclair. She was what folks considered eccentric; she’d been quite a beauty in her day, and rich enough in her own right, but she never married … I guess she was what they used to call a free spirit. There were always artists or writers hanging about the house; she used to hold fancy soirees for music and poetry reading, and her parties were real swell affairs. She took Jesse under her wing when he arrived in Pittsburgh looking for work, and when she found out he was an artist she let him use the top floor of her house as a studio. His Daddy was a miner from West Virginia, but there was no way Jesse was going down that road, so he ran away to the big city to find his fame and fortune.” 

“Was he any good?” Justin asked.

Earl smiled. “I can show you, if you’d like. Brian, you’ve got some height on you. Can you bring me that little painting hanging on the wall there?”

Brian did as he was asked. “This is one of his?” he asked, looking at it before he handed it over.

“Uh huh.” Earl wiped the glass with his sleeve and passed it to Justin: it was a simple watercolour of purple and white lilac blooms. It wasn’t really Justin’s thing, but there was no denying the skill and delicacy of the execution. 

“Missus Clifford, she loved lilacs and she had them planted all round the lake house. Jesse gave that to me, after I took him up to Hauto that last time. He was always friendly, not like the rest of Mr. Max’s crowd. But then, his background was very different. Jesse never really understood how things worked with society folks.”

“He and Mr Max went everywhere together that summer. There was hardly an event Mr. Max attended where Jesse wasn’t tagging along; he went to Hauto with the family, and even stayed at the house in Allegheny a couple of times. Like I said, he was a nice boy, and he made friends easily. I can’t say I ever heard any rumours about the two of them – not that anybody would have talked about such a thing, anyway – and I never saw Mr. Max treat him differently to any of his other friends. But Jesse … well, he never had eyes for anyone else. I figured the boy had a bad crush, and I felt sorry for him.”

“You knew he was gay?” Justin asked.

“I knew no such thing, anymore than I knew Mr. Max was.” He frowned. “You see, in the ‘20’s being gay wasn’t such a big deal, but by the ‘30’s things had changed. Doctors said that homosexuals were either diseased, mentally ill or plain perverted, and a lot of the really bigoted attitudes of today have their roots in that time. That was when folks started hiding. So if a man was gay, he took care not to advertise it. The most I can say is that Jesse was a pretty, gentle boy who was shy around girls. For the rest, it wasn’t none of my business. I just drove the cars.”

“Didn’t it all come out when Jesse killed himself?” Daph asked. “I mean, they must have held an inquest.”

“They did, but Jesse’s sexuality never came into it. The coroner found that he shot himself because he was a cocaine addict, although I never saw any sign of it. I only ever heard of him being drunk once.”

Justin leaned forward. “That’s interesting, because Fish told Brian that Max killed him.”

Daphne’s mouth was hanging open. “Really?” she gasped.

“It’s only an interpretation,” Brain qualified.

Earl sighed. “It’s possible. I never wanted to think it, until I read those letters. But, yeah. It’s possible.”

“Will you tell us what you remember?” Justin asked eagerly.

“If you’re willing to listen, son. Not many folks are,” Earl replied, smiling wryly. “Well, as that summer wore into fall, we saw less of Jesse and the rest of Mr. Max’s crowd. His wedding was set for the following April, and he’d already had hard words from his father about cutting down on his drinking and partying. Thinking about it, I guess I only saw Jesse a couple of times between fall and when Mr. Max told me to take him to Hauto the following spring, but he didn’t seem the same boy. He’d always been quiet, but now it seemed like there was some shadow hanging over him. To me it just looked as though the spirit had drained right out of him.

“What brought it all to a head was when he turned up at Mr. Max’s club, where he was lunching with his future father-in-law. I wasn’t there, but one of the waiters told me about it; Jesse showed up very much the worse for drink, and started causing a scene because they wouldn’t let him in. He was yelling for Mr. Max, and eventually Mr. Max came out and took him away. When he came back to the club about ten minutes later, Mr. Max was looking, in my friend’s words, about as happy as a bulldog chewing a wasp. And it was right after that when Mr. Max told me to take Jesse up to Hauto, because he was going to stay there for a while. None of us ever saw him again.

“We read the reports of the inquest in the papers: he’d been shot in the head with a single bullet from a revolver. They never found a suicide note. The doctor said that his body showed signs of cocaine and alcohol abuse.

“Miss Sinclair testified that Jesse had been going downhill since the summer and that he hadn’t been able to finish a painting for months. He’d gotten more and more moody and depressed; he started coming back drunk and playing music late at night and if she complained he’d swear at her. She told the coroner that he hadn’t paid his rent for the last quarter and she would have told him to leave, only she was sorry for him because he had no place else to go.

“Mr. Max took the stand last: he said how he’d been worried about Jesse’s mental state for a while because he’d become irrational and unpredictable, and he’d suspected that Jesse was using drugs and had tried to persuade him to get help. He said he knew Jesse owed money, but he only found out how much when Jesse had turned up drunk at his club asking for a loan. Mr. Max talked him into staying at the lake house for a couple of months to try to get himself clean and start painting again, and promised to help him sort out his debts. Jesse would place a weekly call from Jim Thorpe, which was about ten miles from Hauto, and at first he seemed to be fine; he said he was painting again and seemed happier. Then there came a week when he missed his call; when he missed the next one, Mr. Max alerted the police in Jim Thorpe and asked them to check on him. That’s how they found him, with the gun still in his hand.”

“How did he get hold of it?” Brian asked.

“Mr. Max lent it to him. The lake house was pretty isolated, and Jesse said he was nervous about being up there alone.”

“Well, if I thought Justin was a depressed, unstable junkie I certainly wouldn’t go handing him a gun!” Daphne snorted.

“Mr. Max said he had no reason to think Jesse was suicidal. He said he’d forever regret what he’d done - I remember the papers said he seemed ‘very distressed and affected.’ Anyway, the coroner’s verdict was that Jesse had committed suicide whilst of unsound mind. He’s buried up there, in the cemetery at Jim Thorpe.”

“You said you thought it was possible Max had killed him,” Justin reminded him. “Why?”

“Because Mr. Max lied under oath,” Earl replied grimly. “At least, I’m pretty sure he did. See, he said that the last time he saw Jesse was when he left Pittsburgh. But one evening maybe a month after Jesse had gone the butler came to tell me that Mr. Max wanted to speak to me on the telephone. He sounded pretty rattled; he said his Austen had hit a deer outside Altoona and had gone off the road, and he’d had to walk into town to find a bar he could call from. He said he’d start walking towards Pittsburgh and told me to come pick him up. It was a dirty night, I remember, and when I finally saw him coming down the highway towards me he was pretty well soaked. He got in the back looking white as a sheet, so I asked him if he was okay. He said yeah, it was just the accident that had shaken him up, so I asked what he was going to do about the Austin and he said he’d make arrangements to get it picked up. I could see him in the rearview wringing his hands and wiping his face, and after a few minutes he told me to pull over … he got out and walked a ways off and I could hear him throwing up. Then he got back in the car and I drove him home. Early next morning I was told to take him and his father to old Sam Burgess’ house, who was the family lawyer and a personal friend of the Old Man. Mr. Max looked pale and worried, but his father looked madder than a wet hen. They never spoke a word to each other the whole way, and they still weren’t speaking an hour later when I drove all three of them to the home of the Chief of Police, Henry Randall, whose father was another close friend of the Old Man’s. And then a couple of days later we heard that Jesse was dead.” Earl shook his head. “See, Mr. Max didn’t know anyone in Altoona. I figured he’d been up to visit Jesse, and was on his way back when he hit the deer. It was only when he claimed at the inquest not to have seen him that I began to wonder if he had something to hide, and if all the running about the next day had had something to do with it.”

“Gramps, why didn’t you say anything?” Daphne asked, dismayed.

“Because no one asked me,” Earl replied simply. “Nobody would have paid attention, anyway. And what did I know? Perhaps Mr. Max had just been out for a drive, although it wasn’t the kind of night I’d have chosen for a jaunt. Or maybe he’d been out to the house and found Jesse already dead, and panicked. Or they had a row, and Jesse shot himself after Mr. Max left.”

“Or maybe Max killed him, and his father’s friends helped cover it up and make it look like suicide,” Justin said.

Earl looked at him soberly. “Yep. Maybe they did. Jesse was nobody, and I doubt the police dug very deep. If it hadn’t happened on Clifford property it wouldn’t have made the headlines at all: as it was, the whole thing blew over soon enough once the coroner reached his verdict.”

“And they all lived happily ever after,” Brian said sourly.

Earl shook his head. “Not by a long shot.”

“Didn’t they go through with the wedding?” Daphne asked hopefully.

“Oh yeah, Mr. Max married Sarah Munro as planned, and half of Pittsburgh turned out - the half that mattered, anyway. But things were never the same between him and the Old Man, and the marriage was never happy. Mr. Max went back to his drinking and partying and Miss Sarah, she lost the baby she was carrying the following year, and that was more or less the end of it. When war broke out, Mr. Max went to Europe and joined the RAF: he never came back. He was shot down over France in 1940. And that was the end of the family: Missus Clifford, she never got over it: folks said her heart was broken. She died a couple of years later. When the Old Man went with cancer in ’62, a distant cousin in Idaho got what was left of the estate. They’re buried in Allegheny Cemetery, except for Mr. Max. His body’s still in France.”

There was silence for a while. “So what are you going to do, Justin?” Daphne asked eventually.

He shrugged. “I’m going to take the letters to Carl, and see if there’s any way to get the suicide verdict overturned. I’m sure that’s what Jesse wants … just for people to know the truth.” He glanced at Earl. “Would you be prepared to make a statement if the police asked you to?”

Earl held his eyes for a long time, his face expressionless, and Justin was sure he was going to refuse. Then the old man nodded slowly. “If they want me to tell them what I know, then I’m willing. I always liked Jesse, and I guess I owe him that at the least. Besides, like I said; there’s nobody left to be hurt by it.”

Justin smiled with relief. “Thank you, Earl,” he said earnestly. He drained the last of his beer and reached for the letters. “Oh, one more thing … does the song Miss Otis Regrets mean anything to you?”

“Why, I haven’t thought of that old thing in a dog’s age,” Earl replied in surprise. “Sure it does. Mr. Max had one of those old portable wind-up gramophones, to take on picnics and such so that they could have music. Jesse was a big fan of Ethel Waters, and he was always badgering Mr. Max to play that song. In fact, I’ve got an Ella Fitzgerald album with Miss Otis on it, but I could never listen to it without thinking of how happy he was that summer, and feeling real bad about what happened to him.” He smiled, not altogether sadly. “Maybe now I can start listening to it again.”

 

 

TBC

 

 

 

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

 

“What do you think?” Justin asked anxiously as Carl studied the letters Justin had given him. “Is it enough to squash the suicide verdict on Jesse?”

“Damned if I know, son, but it certainly seems to cast doubt on it.”

“What do you mean?” Debbie glared at him, wiping a tear away with the back of her hand. “Why, it’s perfectly obvious that this poor kid was fucking murdered by the man who should’ve been looking out for him, all because he was too much of a fucking coward to admit …”

“Debbie,” Carl said, laying a placating hand on her arm, “You’ve got to understand this happened a long time ago and all of the principal witnesses are dead. Apart from these letters, the only incriminating evidence is the memory of a 98 year-old man. Now I’m not going to deny that back then law enforcement was looked at a lot differently, and that it might have been considered better for society in general to preserve the reputation of the great and good rather than expose a murder … but proving it might be another matter. After all, these letters don’t contain a specific threat… they could be read simply as a man’s angry reaction to a blackmail attempt by a lover. And I’m sorry, but supernatural testimony isn’t going to cut a lot of ice with the DA.”

“But there must be something I can do,” Justin protested.

Carl pursed his lips as he considered. “Can I hold on to these letters for a while?” 

“Sure, but I’d want them back. They’re not really mine, you know.”

“I’ll take good care of them,” Carl promised. “And you said Daphne’s great-grandfather would be willing to make a statement?”

“That’s what he told me,” Justin replied. “Don’t get me wrong: he has great respect for the Cliffords and he isn’t happy about dragging out the family secrets, but I think he feels guilty about what happened to Jesse because he never told anyone his suspicions. I guess this is the only way he has to make amends.”

“Well, I still have contacts; I’ll see if I can get the Cold Case Unit to take a look at it. But don’t get your hopes up, Justin - you’ll probably find the very best that might come out of it would be an Open Verdict.”

“I’m sure Jesse would be happy with that,” Justin smiled.

 

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The first weekend Brian had free, he took Justin on the five-hour drive up to Hauto and they spent a few hours exploring the community of luxury vacation homes that had grown up around the beautiful lake where the Cliffords had spent their summers and a young artist had found love and lost his life. Then they drove into Jim Thorpe and ate lunch at Molly Maguire’s before visiting the cemetery: after much searching they found the grave hidden away in a weed-choked corner, and Justin pulled away the smothering greenbriars to disclose the stained, mossy headstone:

JESSE FISHER

1918 - 1936

 

There was nothing else.

Two weeks later Daphne took him back in her little Honda, the boot laden with spades, trowels, scrubbing brushes and two lilac saplings of purple and white. They dug and weeded and scoured clean the headstone, and Justin planted the lilacs at the head and foot of the grave.

“There you go, Fish,” he said, leaning on the spade. “They’ll look beautiful come spring.”

Daphne slipped her left arm around his waist and hugged him before kissing the fingers of her right hand and pressing them lightly to the headstone. “Sweet dreams, Fish,” she murmured. “Chalmers sends his love.”

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Things quietened down a lot after that. In fact, it’s been years since Justin walked into the studio and found that something had been moved or that one of his brushes had gone missing. The only noises now are the sound of wind in the rafters or the scrabble of possible rats in the walls, and the temperature falls no lower than it does in any other Pittsburgh ice box in the middle of winter. If you were to ask Justin, he’d probably admit that he misses the company.

But sometimes Justin opens the door and there’s a faint scent of lilacs in the air, or the lingering notes of a song. Sometimes when he’s painting, the little scarlet fish hanging from the cross bar of his easel starts to revolve, and the silken fins flutter gently in a breeze Justin can’t feel.

At times like that, Justin smiles, and says hello to a friend.

 

 

THE END

 

 

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AUTHOR’S NOTE

 

You might be interested to know that many of the events in this story, specifically the disappearing brush and the overturned drawers, were actual events that happened to me many years ago in the 16th century cottage my partner and I own. I adapted them to the story: in my case it was a hairbrush that disappeared, and it took me a week of searching before I thought to ask for it back. The drawer episode happened exactly as related, except that it involved two drawers full of clothes and not art supplies; I was downstairs when I heard the crash and honestly thought one of the wardrobes had fallen over. 

We got quite used to things being moved or disappearing, and electrical appliances turning themselves on or clocks stopping. Like Justin, I was intrigued rather than afraid, since I had never felt anything other than welcome: unlike Justin, I never found a cause for the haunting; it stopped with the overturned drawers and nothing has really happened since. Also like Justin, I kind of miss it.

Anyway, I hope you’ve enjoyed reading this as much as I’ve enjoyed writing it, and I hope that you found in Fish a presence to inspire compassion rather than fear.

Happy Hallowe’en to you all, and sweet dreams.

Nightvision


End file.
